#frankly I’ve been scared to talk about it on social media given… the state of things (things being both social media and the csm fandom)

[blueish-bird]

you know… seeing all these trans headcanons going around has really got me wanting to talk about my ideas for transfem Aki

[ailuronymy]

Thoughts on the new discourse? Warrior cats naming conventions and rank names being straight up stolen from native American people? So many people seem to be... Straight up leaving the Fandom or changing all of their fan content and it feels very performative and, people not actually thinking critically and just being scared of getting "cancelled"? I feel like your opinions on these matters are very informed and well written so I wanted to ask given that this blog main theme is, well, warrior cat naming system and that seems to be the main issue of the new discourse.

This is probably going to get long, since there's sort of a lot to say about it in order to talk about this whole thing fairly and constructively, because from what I’ve seen there’s a lot of hyperbole happening, and panicking, and disavowing this series and fandom, and so on, like you say, and also some people genuinely trying to have complex meaningful conversations about racism in xenofiction, and also probably some bad faith actors in the mix--as well as some just... stupid actors. Kind of inevitably what happens when two equally bad platforms for having nuanced discussions--i.e., twitter and tumblr--run headlong into each other, in a fandom space with a majority demographic of basically kids and highly anxious, pretty online teens. I don’t mean that as a criticism of fans or their desire to be liked by peers and “correct” about opinions, it’s just the social landscape of Warriors and I think it’s worth pointing out from the start.  

If I’m totally honest with you, if not for this ask, I wouldn’t actually be commenting on it at all, because none of this is going to impact this blog or change how I run it in any way. But since you’ve asked and frankly I do feel some responsibility to try to disentangle things a little for everyone stressed and confused at the moment, because I know a lot of people look to this blog for guidance of all sorts, I’m going to talk about what I think has happened here, and how to navigate the situation in a reasonable way. 

Quick recap for anyone blissfully unaware: from what I understand, this post (migrated over from a presumably bigger twitter thread) has got a lot of people very worried about Warriors being a racist and appropriative series, and now are trying to figure out what ethically to do about this revelation. The thing I found most interesting about this screenshotted conversation is that it makes a lot of bold claims, but misses some pretty surprising details (in my opinion). If you do look critically at what is being said, here’s a few things to notice--crucially, there are two people talking. 

Person 1 says that a lot of animal fantasy fiction + xenofiction (fiction about non-human/”other” beings, such as animals) is frequently built upon stereotypes of First Nations and Indigenous people, and/or appropriates elements of Indigenous culture and tradition as basically set dressing for “strange” and “alien” races/species etc., and this is a racist, deeply othering, and inappropriate practice. This person is right. 

I’ve spent years researching in this field specifically, so I feel pretty confident in vouching (for whatever that’s worth) that this person is absolutely right in making this point. Not only is it frequently in animal fiction/xenofiction, but it’s insidious, which means often it’s hard to notice when it’s happening--unless you know what you’re looking for, or you are personally familiar with the details or tropes that are being appropriated. Because of the nature of racism, white and other non-First Nations people don’t always recognise this trend within texts--even texts they’re creating--but it’s important for us all, and especially white people, to be more aware, because it’s not actually First Nations’ people’s responsibility to be the sole critics of this tradition of theft and misuse. Appropriation by non-Indigenous people is in fact the problem, which means non-Indigenous people learning and changing is the solution. 

Person 1 offers Warriors as a popular example of a work that has this problem. Notably, this person hasn’t given an example of how Warriors is culpable (at least in this screenshot and I haven’t found the thread itself, because the screenshot is what’s causing this conversation), only that it’s an example of a work that has these problems. And once again, this person is correct. We’ll look at that more in a moment.

Person 2 (three tweets below the first) offers, by comparison, several more specious insights. Firstly, it’s really, really not the only time anyone’s ever talked about this, academically + creatively or in the Warriors fandom specifically, and so that reveals somewhat this person’s previous engagement in the space they’re talking into re: this topic. In other words, this person doesn’t know what has already been said or what is being talked about. Secondly, this person explicitly states that they “[don’t know] much about warrior cats specifically but from what I see it just screams appropriation,” which as a statement I think says something crucial re: the critical lens this person has applied + the amount of forethought and depth of analysis of their criticism of this particular series. 

I’m not saying that using twitter to talk about your personal feelings requires you to research everything you talk about before you shoot your mouth off. However, I personally don’t go into a conversation about a topic I don’t know anything about except a cursory glance to offer bold and scathing criticisms based on what it “just screams” to me. By their own admission, this person isn’t really offering good faith, thoughtful criticism of the series, in line with Person 1′s tweet. Instead, Person 2 is talking pretty condescendingly and emphatically about--as the kids say--the vibes they get from the series, and I’m afraid that just doesn’t hold up well in this court. 

So now that there’s Person 1 (i.e., very reasonable, important, interesting criticism) and Person 2 (i.e., impassioned but completely vibes-based opinion from someone who hasn’t read the books) separated, we can see there’s actually several things happening in this brief snapshot, and some of them aren’t super congruent with each other. 

Person 1 didn’t say “don’t read bad books,” or that you’re a bad person for being a fan of stories that are guilty of this. They suggested people should recognise the ways xenofiction uses Indigenous people and their culture inappropriately and often for profit. My understanding of this tweet is someone offering an insight that might not have occurred to many people, but that is valuable and important to consider going forward in how they view, engage with, and create xenofiction media.

Person 2 uses high modality, evocative language that appeals to the emotions. That’s not a criticism of this person: they’re allowed to talk in whatever tone they want, and to express their personal feelings and opinions. However, rhetorically, this person is using this specific language--consciously or subconsciously--to incense their audience--i.e., you. Are you feeling called to action? What action do you feel called to when you rea their words, despite the fact their claims are not based in their own actual analysis of or engagement with the text? It’s, by their own admission, not analysis at all. Everything they evoke is purely in the name of “not good” vibes. 

Earlier I mentioned that Person 1 is correct that Warriors is absolutely guilty of appropriation of First Nations and Indigenous people and culture. I also mentioned that they didn’t specify how. That’s because I think the most egregious example is in fact the tribe, which in many ways plays into the exact kind of stereotyping and appropriation of First Nations Americans that Person 1 mentions, and not the clans, contrary to Person 2′s suggestion. For instance, in addition to the very loaded name of “tribe”, there’s a lot of racist tropes present in how that group of cats is introduced and how the clan cats interact with them, as well as the more North American-inspired scenery of their home. It’s very blatant as far as racism in this series. 

When it comes to the clans themselves, though, I think it’s muddier and harder to draw clear distinctions of what is directly appropriative, what is coincidentally and superficially reminiscent, and what is not related at all. Part of this difficulty in drawing hard lines comes from the fact that, on a personal level, it actually doesn’t matter: if a First Nations person reads a story and feel it is appropriative or inappropriate, it’s not actually anyone’s place to “correct” them on their reading of the text. Our experiences are unique and informed by our perspectives and values, and no group of people are a monolith, which means within community, there will always be disagreement and differenting points of view. There is no one single truth or opinion, which means that First Nations people even in the same family might have very different feelings about the same text and very different perspectives on how respectful, or not, it might be. 

I’m saying this because something that gets said very often when conversations of racism and similar oppressive systems present/perpetuated in texts comes up, people frequently say: “listen to x voices.” It is excellent advice. However, the less pithy but equally valuable follow-up advice is: “listen to the voices of many people of x group, gather information and perspective, and then ultimately use your own judgement to make an informed opinion for yourself.” It means that you are responsible for you. The insight you can gain by listening to people who know topics and experiences far better than you do is truly invaluable, but if your approach to the world is simply to parrot the first voice, or loudest voice, or angriest voice you come across, you will not really learn anything or be able to develop your own understanding and you certainly won’t be making well-informed judgements. 

In other words, one incomplete tweet thread from two people who are each bringing quite different topics and modes of conversation (or perhaps gripes, in Person 2′s case) to the table is not really enough to go off re: making a decision to leave a fandom, in my opinion. In fact, I think in responding to anything difficult, complex, or problematic (which doesn’t mean what popular adage bandies it about to mean) by trying to distance yourself, or cleanse of it, will ultimately harm you and will not do you any good as a person. It is better, in my opinion, to enter into complex relationships with the world and media and other people in an informed, aware way and with a willingness to learn and sometimes to make mistakes and be wrong, rather than shy away from potential conflict or fear that interacting with a text will somehow taint you or define your morality in absolutes. 

So. Does Warriors have racist and appropriative elements, tropes, and issues in the series? Yes, of course it does, it’s a book-packaged series produced by corporation HarperCollins and written by a handful of white British women and their myriad ghostwriters. Racism is just one part of the picture. The books are frequently also ableist, sexist, and homophobic (or heteronormative, depending how you want to slice it, I guess), just to name some of the most evident problems. 

But does the presence of these issues mean it’s contaminated and shouldn’t be touched? Personally, I don’t think so. Given the nature of existing the world, it’s not possible to find perfect media that is free of any kind of bias, prejudice, or even just ideas or topics or concepts that are challenging or uncomfortable. I think it’s more meaningful to choose to engage with these elements, discuss them, criticise them, learn from them, and acknowledge also that imperfection is the ultimate destiny of all of us, especially creators.

I’m not saying that as a pass, like, “oh enjoy your media willy-nilly, nothing matters, do what you want, think about no-one else ever because we’re all flawed beings,” but rather that it’s important not to look away from the problems in the things we enjoy, rather than cut off all contact and enjoyment when we realise the problems. That doesn’t mean you have to only criticise and always be talking about how bad a thing you like is either, publicly admonishing yourself or the text, because that’s also not a constructive way to engage with media. 

As I said, there’s a lot to say here, and believe it or not, this is honestly the shortest version I could manage. There’s always more to say and plenty I haven’t talked about, but pretty much tl;dr: 

I don’t find Person 2′s commentary particularly compelling, personally, because I think it’s a little broad and a little specious in its conclusions and evidence, and I also suspect that this person is speaking more from their feelings than from a genuine desire to educate or meaningfully criticise, unlike Person 1. That’s not to say Warriors isn’t frequently racist and guilty of the issues Person 1 is discussing, because it is, but I don’t think this tweet thread is a great source of insight into the ongoing history of this problem in xenofiction, or Warriors specifically, on its own. I would recommend exploring further afield to learn more from a variety of sources and form your own opinions. I hope this helps. 

[maximelebled]

2019 & 2020

Hello everyone! So yeah, this yearly blog post is about three... four months late... it covers two years now.

I did have a lot of things written last year, last time, but the more things have changed, the more I’ve realized that a lot of things I talked about on here... were because I lacked enough of a social life to want to open up on here.

In a less awkwardly-phrased way, what I’m saying is, I was coping.

Not an easy thing to admit to in public by any means, but I reckon it’s the truth. Over the past two years, I’ve made more of an effort to build better & healthier friendships, dial back my social media usage a bit (number 1 coping strategy), not tie all my friendships to games I play, especially Dota (number 2 coping strategy), so that I could be more emotionally healthy overall. 

Pictured: me looking a whole lot like @dril on the outside, although not so much on the inside. (Photo by my lovely partner.)

To some degree, I believe it’s important to be able to talk about yourself a bit more openly in a way that is generally not encouraged nor made easy on other social networks (looking at you, Twitter). I know that 2010-me would be scared to approach 2020-me; and it’s my hope that what I am writing here would not help him with that, but also help him become less of an insecure dweeb faster. 😉

Not that recent accomplishments have stopped me from being any less professionally anxious. Sometimes the impostor syndrome just morphs into... something else.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is, the first reason it took me until this year to finish last year’s post is because, with my shift in perspective, and these realizations about myself, I do want to keep a lot more things private... or rather, it’s that I don’t feel the need to share them anymore? And that made figuring out what to write a fair bit harder.

The other reason I didn’t write sooner is because, in 2018, I wrote my "year in review” post right before I became able to talk about my then-latest cool thing (my work on Valve’s 2018 True Sight documentary). So I then knew I’d have to bring it up in the 2019 post. But then, I was asked to work on the 2019 True Sight documentary, and I know it was going to air in late January 2020, so I was like, “okay, well, whatever, it, I’ll just write this yearly recap after that, so I don’t miss the coach this time”. So I just ended up delaying it again until I was like... “okay, whatever, I’ll just do both 2019 and 2020 in a single post.”

I think I can say I’ve had the privilege of a pretty good 2019, all things considered. And also of a decent 2020, given the circumstances. Overall, 2019 was a year of professional fulfillment; here’s a photo taken of me while I was managing the augmented reality system at The International 2019! (The $35 million dollar Dota 2 tournament that was held, this that year, in Shanghai.)

If I’d shown this to myself 10 years ago it would’ve blown my mind, so I guess things aren’t all that bad...!

I’ve brought up two health topics in these posts before: weight & sleep.

As for the first, the situation is still stable. If it is improving, it is doing so at a snail’s pace. But quite frankly, I haven’t put in enough effort into it overall. Even though I know my diet is way better than it was five or six years ago, I’ve only just really caught up with the “how it should have been the entire time” stage. It is a milestone... but not necessarily an impressive one. Learning to cook better things for myself has been very rewarding and fulfilling, though. It’s definitely what I’d recommend if you need to find a place to start.

As for sleep, throughout 2019, I continued living 25-hour days for the most part. There were a few weeks during which I slowed down the process, but it continued on going. Then, in late December of 2019, motivated by the knowledge that sleep is such a foundational pillar of your health, I figured I really needed to take things seriously, and I managed to go on a three month streak of mostly-stable sleep! (See the data above.)

Part of what helped was willingly stopping to use my desktop computer once it got too late in the day, avoiding Dota at the end of the day as much as possible, and anything exciting for that matter... and, as much as that sounds like the worst possible stereotype, trying to “listen to my body” and recognizing when I was letting stress and anxiety build up inside me, and taking a break or trying to relax.

Also, a pill of melatonin before going to bed; but even though it’s allegedly not a problem to take melatonin, I figured I should try to rely on it as little as possible.

Unfortunately, that “good sleep” streak was abruptly stopped by a flu-like illness... it might have been Covid-19. The symptoms somewhat matched up, but I was lucky: they were very mild. I fully recovered in just over a week. I coughed a bit, but not that much. If it really was that disease, then I got very lucky.

(Pictured: another photo by my lovely SO, somewhere in Auvergne.)

My sleep continued to drift back to its 25-hour rhythm, and I only started resuming these efforts towards the fall... mostly because living during the night felt like a better option with the summer heat (no AC here). I thought about doing that the other way (getting up at 3am instead of going to bed at 7am), and while it’d make more sense temperature-wise, that would have kept me awake when there were practically no people online, and I was trying to have a better social life then, even if had to be purely online due to the coronavirus, so... yeah.

I’ve been working from home since 2012! I also lived alone for a number of years since then. For the most part, it hasn’t been a great thing for my mental health. Having had a taste of what being in an office was like thanks to a couple weeks in the Valve offices, I had the goal of beginning to apply at a few places here and there in March/April. Then the pandemic hit, so those plans are dead in the water. I wanted 2020 to be the year in which I’d finally stop being fully remote, but those plans are now dead in the water.

Now, at the end of the year, I don’t really know if I want to apply at any places. There’s a small handful of studios whose work really resonates with me, creatively speaking, and whose working conditions seem to be alright, at least from what I hear... but, and I swear I’m saying this in the least braggy way possible... there’s very little that beats having been able to work on what I want, when I want, and how much I want.

This kind of freelance status can be pretty terrifying sometimes, but I’ve managed (with some luck, of course) to reach a safe balance, a point at which I’ve effectively got this luxury of being able to only really work on what I want, and never truly overwork myself (at least by the standards of most of the gaming industry). It’s a big privilege and I feel like it’d take a lot to give it up.

Besides the things I mentioned before, one thing I did that drastically improved my mental health was being introduced to a new lovely group of friends by my partner! I started playing Dungeons & Dragons with them, every weekend or so! And in the spirit of a rising tide lifting all boats, I managed to also give back to our lovely DM, by being a sort of “AM” (audio manager)... It’s been great having something to look forward to every week.

Something to look forward to... I’ve heard about the concept of “temporal anchors”. I had heard about how the reason our adult years suddenly pass by in a blur is because we now have more “time” that’s already in our brains, but now I’m more convinced that it’s because we’re going from a very school routine such as the one schools impose upon us, to, well... practically nothing.

I thought most of my years since 2011 have been a blur, but none have whooshed by like 2020 has, and I reckon part of that is because I’ve (obviously) gone out far far less, and most importantly there wasn’t The Big Summer Event That The International Is, the biggest yearly “temporal anchor” at my disposal. The anticipation and release of those energies made summer feel a fair bit longer... and this year, summer was very much a blur for me. In and out like the wind.

I guess besides that, I haven’t really had that much trouble with being locked down. I had years of training for that, after all. Doesn’t feel like I can complain. 😛

(Pictured: trip to Chicago in January of 2019... right when the polar vortex hit!)

Work was good in 2019, and sparser in 2020. Working with Valve again after the 2018 True Sight was a very exciting opportunity. At the time, in February of 2019, I was out with my partner on little holiday trips around my region, and, after night fell, on the way back, we decided to stop in a wide open field, on a tiny countryside path, away from the cities, to try and do some star-gazing, without light pollution getting in the way.

And it’s there and then that I received their message, while looking at the stars with my SO! The timing and location turned that into a very vivid memory...

I then got to spend a couple weeks in their offices in late April / early May. I was able to bring my partner along with me to Washington State, and we did some sightseeing on the weekends.

(Pictured: part of a weekend trip in Washington. This was a dried up lakebed.)

After that, I worked on the Void Spirit trailer in the lead to The International. In August, those couple weeks in Shanghai were intense. Having peeked behind the curtain and seen everything that goes into production really does give me a much deeper appreciation for all the work that goes unseen. 

Then after that, in late 2019, there was my work on the yearly True Sight documentary, for the second time. In 2018, I’d been tasked with making just two animated sequences, and I was very nervous since that was my first time working directly with Valve; my work then was fairly “sober”, for lack of a better term.

(Pictured: view from my hotel room in Shanghai.)

For the 2019 edition, I had double the amount of sequences on my plate, and they were very trusting of me, which was very reassuring. I got to be more technically ambitious, I let my style shine through (you know... if it’s got all these gratuitous light beams, etc.), and it was real fun to work on.

At the premiere in Berlin, I was sitting in the middle of the room (in fact, you could spot me in the pre-show broadcast behind SirActionSlacks; unfortunately I had forgotten to bring textures for my shirt). Being in that spot when my shots started playing, and hearing people laughing and cheering at them... that’s an unforgettable memory. The last time I had experienced something like that was having my first Dota short film played at KeyArena in 2015, the laughter of the crowd echoing all around me... I was shaking in my seat. Just remembering it gets my heart pumping, man. It’s a really unique feeling.

So I’m pretty happy with how that work came out. I came out of it having learned quite a few new tricks too, born out of necessity from my technical ambitions. Stuff I intend to put to use again. I’m really glad that the team I worked with at Valve was so kind and great to work with. After the premiere, I received a few more compliments from them... and I did reply, “careful! You might give me enough confidence to apply!”, to which one of them replied, “you totally should, man.” But I still haven’t because I’m a massive idiot, haha. Well, I still haven’t because I don’t think I’m well-rounded enough yet. And also because, like I alluded to before, I think I’m in a pretty good situation as it is.

It’s not the first encouragements I had received from them, too; there had been a couple people from the Dota team who, at the end of my two week stay in the offices, while I was on my way out, told me I should try applying. But again, I didn’t apply because I’m a massive idiot.

(Pictured: view from the Valve offices.)

To be 200% frank, even though there’s been quite a few people who’ve followed my work throughout the years, comments on Reddit and YouTube, etc. who’ve all said things along the lines of “why aren’t you working for them ?”, well... it’s not something I ever really pursued. I know it’s a lot of people’s dream job, but I never saw it that way. I feel like, if it ever happened to me... sure, that could be cool! But I don’t know if it’s something I really want, or even that I should want?

And if you add “being unsure” to what I consider to be a lack of experience in certain things, well... I really don’t think I’d be a good candidate (yet?), and having seen how busy these people are on the inside, the last thing I want to do is waste their time with a bad application. That would be the most basic form of courtesy I can show to them.

Besides, Covid-19 makes applying to just about any job very hard, if not outright impossible right now. And for a while longer, I suspect.

(Pictured: the Tuilière & Sanadoire rocks.)

I’m still unhappy about the amount of “actual animation” I get to do overall since I like to work on just about every step of the process in my videos, but well. It’s getting better. One thing I am happy with though, is “solving problems”. And new challenges. Seeking the answers to them, and making myself be able to see those problems, alongside entire projects, from a more “holistic” way, that is to say, not missing the forest for the trees.

It’s hard to explain, and even just the use of the term “holistic” sounds like some kind of pompous cop-out... but looking back on how I handled projects 5 years ago vs. now, I see the differences in how I think about problems a lot. And to some extent I do have my time on Valve contracts to thank a LOT in helping me progress there.

Anyway, I’m currently working on a project that I’m very interested & creativefuly fulfilled by. But it has nothing to do with animation nor Dota, for a change! There are definitely at least two other Dota short films I want to make, though. We’ll see how that goes.

Happy new year & take care y’all.

[rockofeye]

Calling Out and Calling In: Jessyka Winston and Haus of Hoodoo

It’s not uncommon for me to receive asks or messages asking me to verify that a particular priest or a particular sosyete is valid/authentic/traditional/etc. By and large, I don’t answer these because it’s not appropriate in that there is no reason for me to comment on a particular person or sosyete. That’s not how you make friends, maintain a religious community, or serve the spirits.

And, there is the truth that, in Haiti and on the island in general, there is variety in practice. I talk a lot about regleman, which is the appropriate order for things, and I talk a lot about what happens when folks just want to grab what they thinks looks cool or spooky for their own purposes (no, Papa Legba is not a cocaine-sniffing demon, no, Ezili Freda does not want to be saluted with twerking). Discernment is a thing, and well-trained priests have it; folks can sniff out fraud versus ‘huh, we don’t do it like that but it makes a lot of sense that other people do it this way’.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of fraud and fraudulent folks who use the trappings of the religion to make a lot of cash. It happens a lot. A LOT. It happens in Haiti and it happens outside of Haiti. The birth of social media has given folks, legitimate and not, a place to showcase what they do and connect with people whom are seeking the spirits or, conversely, whom the spirits are seeking. It was that for me; I reconnected with an old friend on Facebook after at least 5 years of no contact and, through a series of Very Fortunate Events, found my way to my spiritual mother’s door from there.

Social media has given a platform for fraudulent people to really dig their heels in. Instagram (the platform I love to hate) is particularly awful with this. Folks who have not had exposure or training in the religion see beautiful photos and assume that what they are seeing is true and authentic because it looks like it must be, or someone is a very talented writer and uses generic photos along with compelling, persuasive text. This is not the fault of the folks looking—how can they know?--but the fault squarely of the people trying to trade the sacred for power, adoration, and, often most importantly, cold hard cash.

This reality often brings up a very difficult conversation to have that contains a lot of hard truths: the face of fraud in Haitian Vodou is not always white and birthright (or the presumption of birthright) can be abused.

These two things bring us to the topic at hand: Haus of Hoodoo and the person behind it, Jessyka Winston.

Haus of Hoodoo is a small business that began online selling fixed candles and posting lovely photos. Within the last 6 months or so, a retail location opened in New Orleans. It’s a cute shop (I like all the plants), and she portrays it as doing well.

Where things have gone from cringe-y to whose-child-is-this to ‘you have got to be fucking kidding me’ complete with the sort of strangled laugh that doesn’t come from something funny is around Haitian Vodou.

Let me be really clear: I have been watching this for a good long while, and I didn’t want to say anything for the reasons outlined above and because, quite bluntly, I know this is going to bring a whole lot of unpleasantness to my doorstep. Jessyka likes to flex, and how she flexes is making statements that she feels are intimidating/fear-inspiring, going in on character assassination, and, frankly, talking a whole lot of shit. She threatens sending spirits after someone, with the stated intent that a person will die or be made food, and she spins into this cyclone of nonsense that she thinks leaves her looking authentic and traditional. It doesn’t, and I don’t attach weight to those sorts of things or get scared of them. But, I have known that’s what is in store as soon as this is published and I had to kind of have a talk with myself to make sure I have really been willing to take that on. At this point, I am willing because what has been said is so incredibly untrue and, in some cases, downright harmful or unethical. There are times to be quiet, and there are times to speak. This one of those times to speak.

After the cut, I’m going to lay things out the best I can with the receipts I’ve got and the knowledge I have been blessed to gain. It’s going to be image-heavy and with a lot of text, and there’s a LOT of it.

But, before we get there, it’s important to acknowledge some things upfront:

Haus of Hoodoo/Jessyka Winston is alone in what she is saying. She is not gaining support from anyone and no one is standing up to agree with her. She has been a topic in the Haitian Vodou community for at least a year, and no one has said much of anything to her because, sadly, no one seems to be invested in her.  I really do think this is sad. Haitian Vodou is familial in nature, even across sosyetes and lineages. Folks disagree with each other and argue, but they still come back and call each other sister and brother. She has said she is a part of no community and eschews what community means, but I can’t imagine what it must be like to not have anyone who will either support you because what you are saying is true for your corner, or anyone who cares enough to say ‘hey, I know you mean well but you’re really off-base here. Maybe you should walk it back’. I think this is why she has turned so poisonous. I know I have benefited greatly from a spiritual parent and siblings who have helped me right my course and/or given me a kick in the butt. Not having that is a huge loss and a huge spiritual hole.

I also do not think Jessyka is without redemption. She can change what she is doing and change the current course she has set for herself. While the things she has said will never go away, she can take responsibility for the inaccuracies she is spreading, the outright disrespect she is showing to Haitians and the people who made it possible for her to even have contact with the religion, and the harm she is inflicting. With the lwa, there is always a chance to do things differently. The function of community, in this moment, is to call out the hurt and harm she is spreading, and to call her in so that she may come back to center and work on repairing not only what she has perpetuated but work repairing herself as well.

(Quick note, some of the image formatting is weird and some images are darker than others. If you are having trouble reading something, let me know. I regret that I cannot caption each one. Additionally, I have removed the actual photos from the images for time and bandwidth)

With those things in mind, let’s take a look at what has been going on:

To timeline things for context, Jessyka initiated in Afa vodoun and Mami Wata practices in Ghana in early 2017. After her return to the US, she began talking about Haitian Vodou and began attending ceremony in New Orleans with a New Orleans spiritual community and a Haitian Vodou sosyete with their US temple in NO. At some point in here, she did a lave tet under the lineage head of the sosyete, and then followed that with kanzo in Haiti, where she was made a manbo asogwe. This is really fast and potentially really ill-advised. When you initiate somewhere, your head needs time to settle down and you need to get to know your spirits. When you spin through it and don’t give your head a chance to settle, things get messy—you are unbalanced, your head is unbalanced, and your spirits are unbalanced. A wise person once told me it takes 5 years to be proficient enough in something to have a basic understanding, and this rings true spiritually.  

This is where things get sticky. Not too long after her kanzo (about 2-3 months, maybe a little more), she left the house she was made in, stating that she was taken advantage of. At this point, she had left her long-term partner, gotten involved with a Haitian man, and returned to Haiti to have other ceremonies done, somewhere near the end of 2018. I have receipts for these things but, for brevity and bandwidth, I’m not going to insert them all. If you want to see them, hit me up.

This is sticky for two reasons:

She wiped her Instagram of all visual cues attaching her to this house. She had written a LOT about them and a lot about the relationship she had with her initiatory mother, but she chose to try and re-write her history after she left. This is not how kanzo works and, in reality, not how the internet works. I saw a lot of what she had written myself.

Allegations of fraud in the way that she insists happened are hard to address because they often involve matters of secrecy that only another priest can recognize. I can’t say for absolute certainty what happened in the djevo/initiatory chamber she went into, as I wasn’t there. That’s not shade, it really just means what it says: I can’t pass judgment because I didn’t go inside that djevo. I would expect that sosyete to say the same of me in that they were not in the djevo that I went into and cannot judge the absolute correctness of what happened there. Priests are pretty solid on not extending opinions of things that have not verified with their own eyes.

What I can say is that Jessyka has posted things that are very true about kanzo (initiation in an asson lineage), and many, many things that are false. The largest problem with this outside of potentially betraying oaths of secrecy that I know she took is that she doesn’t seem to know the difference between what is true and what is manufactured, either by misinformation she has received or by her own lack of experience, as she has never stood inside a djevo on the other side of kanzo. She never went back to see how it was done, and she didn’t stay long enough to be taught.

I saw her post something once that she should know better than to post, and I addressed it as my one-and-done (or what I thought was one-and-done) shot at saying something, priest to priest, in the hopes that they would right their wrongs:

@anbadlo is my Instagram account that I use to post spiritual work and art, however infrequently, and I’ve mentioned it here before. It has the name I am commonly known by on the internet, which is pretty easy to link up to this blog and to my other online presences attached to Vodou. I wrote fairly quickly in my response below hers because I knew I was on borrowed time, as she blocks anyone who disagrees with her or that she perceives to harm her business (which is her prerogative, of course).

What I didn’t get a chance to screenshot before she blocked me was her further response saying that she would humiliate me with what I didn’t know about Haitian Vodou and that I should try going to Haiti before saying anything to her or anybody else. This was sort of eyebrow raising not because it upset me but because a) there is nothing humiliating or shameful about not knowing something and I am pretty open that I am always learning, and b) she spoke without giving a thought to who might be speaking to her. If someone was to pull me up online for posting something inappropriate or inaccurate, I’d at least click on their name to see who they were before asserting that I was an authority who could humiliate them. I also did not and do not understand why someone who claims to be a spiritual leader or authority would want to humiliate someone. Folks can be corrected without character assassination or purposeful embarrassment.

Far more interesting than those things, though, is that she denies she was made asogwe which is untrue based on her own words:

She’s since deleted this post, but it was a post that quite a few priests saw and saved. To be honest, I sort of chuckled about this because what is written here is not true about being a houngan or manbo asogwe but it digs at something more serious: her attitude and orientation of being more authentic-than-thou and being what she perceives as the most traditional of the traditionalists. Like, I come from a traditional Haitian lineage that is known for doing things traditionally, and all of this is above and beyond. I talk frequently about how Haitian Vodou is a practical religion, and it’s not practical to go bother the lwa if you want to have sex, shave your legs, or stay out late. There are situations where some of the things she has said might be true for a very short period of time, but no one does this nor is it traditional. Haitians are not going to their tables every time they want to get their hair done.

It is possible that she had some deep misunderstandings about what she was taught, it is possible she made it all up, or, perhaps most likely, it is possible that she offered all these things up to her lwa and they took them. Spirits can be opportunists and they love attention. If you commit to giving them a chicken every week, they will expect a chicken from you every week and are going to be displeased when you don’t deliver. If you offer things up, they are going to hold that as their standard. This is why discernment is important, as is maintaining ongoing relationships with a teacher and (IMPORTANT) asking before you make an offer when you are new to a religion and a religious office (priest).

It is also equally important to note that when you kanzo and come out a houngan or manbo asogwe, that’s an indelible mark that cannot be erased. You can point middle fingers at people and walk away, but that doesn’t change what was put on you. Other work and other ceremonies can be done (however ill-advised), but it can never erase what you willingly consented to and had placed on your head. Her desire to separate herself from this and her asson lineage of kanzo doesn’t mean it is erased, no matter how much you want to re-invent yourself.

But, this was kind of a fore-runner and warning sign of what was to come in terms of more-authentic-than-thou and, bluntly, honesty. In retrospect, if someone had sort of nudged her and said ‘hey, you don’t have to be doing the most of the most to be a good manbo’ maybe we wouldn’t be where we are. On the other hand, people have to take their own roads and it is not the place of any priest to really step in when there is no harm done to others. Like, if you want to tie yourself up that tightly, it is certainly within your rights to do so.

More recently, what she has posted has taken a turn for the truly bizarre. Her Instagram is a sort of echo chamber—some vodouizan read and largely do not interact, and a whole lot of people follow her who don’t have other exposure to the religion but, as before, she is standing alone. She says things and presents images that fit a narrative she creates, and it hits a nerve with folks seeking spiritual meaning or it fits an internal narrative they have, even if it is not a narrative reflected currently or historically. This is not a slam to folks who follow her or who have followed her and thought she was reflecting the Real Vodou she says she is, as we are all human and all searching for where our heart and heads feel at home, and sometimes that search has a pit stop or side quest.

She really got going with what amounts to flexing: she presents herself as powerful and untouchable, and makes statements that people she perceives as standing against her or attacking her will be harmed or killed:

At first glance, these things are laughable, literally. It is perhaps not my proudest, most enlightened moment as a person or an houngan, but I saw this litany of fear and I just chuckled because...c’mon. COME ON. This tells a really transparent story: someone got to her or she presumes someone got to her, and she’s Bothered. So, she posts these things about how spirits are going to eat people, she’s going burn things down, people are going to suffer, etc etc etc. This is a traditional internet spiritual song; I Have Been Wronged, Let Me Put On My Robe And Wizard Hat.

In Haitian Vodou, when these moments play out publicly, it is a moment when face is lost. Haitian culture and, as follows, the religion very much has an element of ‘don’t let them see you sweat’. Like, broadcasting that work was thrown at you means they win because acknowledgment is the loss. Haitians can be super stoic when things go sideways, and they don’t tell anyone that will listen (or the internet) that they are suffering. People want reactions, so you don’t give it to them. In some ways, this is where the chuckle comes from. In Haiti, it’s the aunties cackling.

Instead, you do your work. Do. Your. Work. You go to your spirits, you do your thing, and you get on with it because when you have the juice/power to do your work and take care of your business, you don’t have to tell people that you have it. The priests and workers who are the most intimidating and who can back it up are the ones who say nothing about what they can do—they just do it and wait for the conclusion.

And, like, after a chuckle, I have compassion for those moments of outburst because I’ve been there. When you feel you’ve been hit by work or are faced by things that feel like they threaten your livelihood, it can be hard to know what to do with that as new/young priest. These are things we unpack with our initiatory parent and our siblings who have been in the same spot. This is what the family and communal function of Vodou is for.

All chuckles aside, there are things to unpack here.

Intimidation is really about control. Statements (and actions, like she is talking about here) are made not to communicate a truth, really, but to bring about a desired outcome. Like, not having people publicly question the veracity of a statement or to create an environment where, if a person steps out of the perceived line, they are the target of the same vitriolic statements and actions.

There is also the perceive importance of the statements; that the spirits supposedly showed up in a dream and named names, that people will die, bloody imagery, that she has no control over things now. For vodouizan, this is kind of front-street pedestrian stuff. Dreams happen, sometimes they are violent, we keep it moving.

But, this takes what is meant for one person and tries to use it as a bludgeon to illustrate what Jessyka wants to be taken as fact: that she is something powerful to be feared. Beyond that fear is situational only, fear does not translate to respect. When you try to assert power by fear and intimidation, you only hold people by how violent you can appear. In Vodou, that might work for a minute, but it eventually backfires.

And, this sort of atmosphere is only maintained as for as long as those who are watching are not aware that this is fear, not necessarily substance. The folks who are wowed by threats of spiritual violence are the folks who have not yet seen Haitian Vodou is practice. The illusion falls when the cracks show and when seekers see anything else. In some ways, what has been presented is another version of the emperor has no clothes.

These kind of things—the threats, the descriptions of violence—play into a Western-dominated narrative of Haitian Vodou as uncivilized and dangerous. I showed some of these posts to my roommate, who is very much not a practitioner of anything spiritual, and their remark was ‘...and this is why people are scared of Vodou’. They are right. When we start playing up this idea of warring, bloody violence as what Vodou—and Jessyka claims she has ‘real Vodou’--we perpetuate the idea that Vodou is something to be feared, that Haitians are people are somehow inherently violent, and that Haiti is an uncivilized, backwards country. This is the dogwhistle of white supremacy, and has been since the first “zombie” movie was released in 1932.

And yet, there are more serious consequences to sort of gleefully portraying Vodou as something that always punishes and never embraces. For decades, Protestant missionaries have hammered on Haiti as a godless, devil-wracked nation, and used isolated images of animal sacrifice as a bludgeon to withhold aid or set requirements of conversion or church attendance on receiving aid. Those isolated images combined with a Western narrative that amounts to ‘yeah, I’m going to send my spirits at you’ gives that sector more ammunition than they could ever need. It may not hurt Jessyka or me directly, but it hurts Haitians living in Haiti who suffer the consequences.

The thread that gets tugged when even the slightest criticism of this comes up is that what Jessyka has is “real vodou”. She’s said it a few times, in a few different ways:

These are curious statements in a couple ways. From the top, anyone who tells you they have the absolute truth and are here to wake you up or that they have the real deal (versus the “fast food”) is looking for some kind of buy-in, whether it is someone falling into the same thought patterns or a financial buy-in. These are loops to get folks who may not have had access to information before on the hook. Everyone wants the truth, right?

This is manipulative and an attempt to control—if you’re getting the truth here, why are you listening to these con artists who are only out for your money? I’m giving you the TRUTH. The Bonewits Evaluation Frame for cults and new religious movements is useful here. It’s aimed at neo-pagans, but the criteria is universal.

It also perpetuates that everything in Haitian Vodou is secretive and mysterious. It’s really not. It’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine because it perpetuates this otherness that doesn’t need to be there. The religion has moments of secrecy and seclusion, but it’s really not as much as people would like others to believe. Here, the idea that she has the truth is communicated with videos of things that she seems to think no one will have information about or have seen before, or with commentary that creates this aura of exceptionalism. It’s simply not true.

This is a video of a chèche fèy ceremony; where leaves are gathered for initiation ceremonies or other large spiritual work. Often Gran Bwa comes down and selects the leaves himself, for some folks Simbi might come down and do this work. In the video, you can see several of the folks bearing leaves on their heads are possessed or close to possessed, and they are wearing the country-style outfits that are worn for particular types of work.

This is a pile fèy ceremony, where, as she says, leaves are being crushed for spiritual work, under the gaze of Gran Bwa. In many asson lineages, the act of crushing the leaves is part of a larger ceremony ahead of initiation, stretching for three nights to make sure all the work is finished for the new would-be initiates.

This is a video of a spiritual feeding for Danti, or Danti Bitasyon, Danti Demanbwe, and other names, who is sort of the conglomeration of ancestral spirits issuing forth from a particular plot of land. Generally, Danti possesses people who are blood relatives of the lineage celebrating the feeding. The caption is interesting because it’s an interesting read on what is happening as this is OUR spirit blessing us. Like, it is certainly possible but it’s curious. When you go to ceremonies regularly, you see spirits behave like this a lot (leaning on folks or falling into them while dancing and then dancing around the room/space) and, truly and honestly, what it boils down to is that the spirit is not yet seated fully and is sort of getting adjusted to it’s meat suit or you are simply in the way. Here, Danti is waiting for the sacrifice, which is happening or being prepared just out of view on the right in the corner, and is dancing while they wait.

The idea that it is a spirit that belongs to Jessyka and her husband is...interesting. When people talk about their spirits coming to get something or coming down, it often refers to the spirit mounting their head, ie ‘my Ogou came down at the fete last night and took his bull’. I certainly have face recognition with spirits who take the heads of others, but my spirits come in my head.

It’s also worth checking in on what Jessyka is referring to as the truth.

In Haiti, there are two main lineages of what folks call sèvis Ginen or sèvis lwa; also known as Haitian Vodou. One utilizes the asson/ason and is often called the asson lineage or some variant, and one utilizes the tcha-tcha, and is often called the tcha-tcha lineage or Deka Vodou. Additionally, there are numerable family practices specific to nuclear families that are passed to family members only.

After that, there are things that folks often refer to as secret societies, which is a weird term..they aren’t secret on the island at all. They have many names—Bizango, Chanpwel/Sanpwel, Makandal, Makaya, Zobop, etc—and a good way to describe them is Ginen-adjacent or Vodou-adjacent practices. They operate differently than most/many ason lineages or tcha-tcha lineages, and subscribe to different methods/means of building relationships with spirits and different ways of bringing people together. There are often specific color combinations and symbols (black/red, red/green, sometimes red/yellow, black/blue, coffins, etc) and an understood hierarchy explained with government-related terms like emperor, prezidan/president, renn(queen)/rwa(king). There’s often talk about being given a throne (Googling Bizango throne will show beautiful examples) and being in command and similar. A lot of people have a lot of feelings about these things, but it’s really just another way to do things. Lots of folks who have the asson also will have Vodou-adjacent practices as well; it’s pretty common and fits well together, not unlike folks who have Lucumi and Palo, or Candomble and Umbanda.

Why go into all this here? Jessyka codes and displays things a particular way that describes a Sanpwel-influenced practice, whether she knows it or not. Sanpwel is often very rooted in more rural areas and might combine with a family practice or exist alongside one. The temple complex in her videos is painted red and black, some of the dwapo displayed are styled like many dwapo in Vodou-adjacent practices are, and a lot of her language around being part of a manbo-houngan pair or the ‘chiefs’ who over see a ‘bitasion’ (bitasyon in Kreyòl Ayisyen) reflects this. None of this is a bad thing, but the idea that it is the true Vodou or the real Vodou on the island stems from folks like E.A. Koetting (of Become A Living God infamy) who got wow-ed by skulls with mirror eyes and manufactured the idea of more-authentic-than-thou. There’s no need to go all cloak and dagger about what you do, unless the cloak and dagger serves your agenda.

This sort of coding shows up when she talks about her ‘bitasion’/bitasyon. She has posted extensively about what a ‘bitasion’ is in the last few weeks, and she seems to have some confusion about it and is mixing it with other concepts from Haitian Vodou. A bitasyon is literally the physical seat of your home; your lakou/yard where you were born or where your parents had their home or where your family has lived over time. There are certainly spirits tied to place there—a family may have a Simbi who really likes one particular basin, or Freda may show a great preference for a particular tree—but how she is talking about it is curious:

There’s a lot here that is weird, but there’s a few things to pull out specifically. She describes her ‘bitasion’ as the land she and her husband have inherited, the specific land from where her lwa spring, and the land that her family has lived and died on for generations.

So...if she says that she and her husband have this ‘bitasion’ together, she is communicating that her family and her husband’s family are related and/or the same. This would be a huge oddity in Haiti. Even relationships between initiatory siblings can be frowned upon, nevermind actual blood relations. Further, she is saying that her family has lived on this plot of land for decades, so they’d be REALLLY related. Like, brother-sister related. I can’t imagine that, if true, this would be something she would talk so much about on the internet. I assume she has misspoken or misunderstood.

It could be that she thinks you inherit a ‘bitasion’ when you marry a Haitian, as she had, but she has an odd idea about it. Like, if that’s where she is thinking on it, she’s close. When you marry a Haitian, you become acquainted with their bitasyon. Like, your spouse brings you around and you greet the land and the spirits there and are welcomed as their spouse, but you are not greeted as a blood family member would be. Marriage doesn’t change things like that. Like, folks joke rather crudely that I am Haitian-by-injection (since I am married to a Haitian man) and I am acquainted and welcomed by his family, living and dead, and can go visit his various bitasyon as his spouse. If he was in some sort of trouble, I could go to one of his bitasyon on his behalf and ask for their help...but none of that makes those my bitasyon.

She uses this idea of ‘bitasion’ to batter people, saying over and over that you must have a ‘bitasion’ in Haiti to be able to initiate into her idea of true Vodou:

She repeats this all over the place over and over. She hammers on it.

There’s a lot to unpack here. A LOT.

She out and out says that Haitians born in the Diaspora are not real Haitians and cannot be called a priest in the tradition. Not only is this deeply inaccurate, it’s jaw-droppingly disrespectful and displays a lack of understanding of Haitian Vodou. A Haitian child born in the Diaspora (outside of the country) has a bitasyon. Several, in fact, and more if they have two Haitian parents. If I have a child with my Haitian husband, they will have several bitasyon in Haiti.

The same goes for Haitians who were adopted out of the country, who were orphaned, and/or Haitians who don’t know where their bitasyon are. These realities are deep wounds in Haiti and for many Haitians, and who goes around deciding, essentially, who is and is not Haitian? Like, this isn’t even addressing the spiritual fucked-upness of those statements, but purely from a human standpoint. No one gets to decide who can access their Haitian lineage or call on their birthright. It’s not just insensitive, it’s rude.

This pulls up what actually made me upset when I read a lot of these posts: the temerity of a non-Haitian to make pronouncements about Haitians and dictate what Haitians can do. Like, a legit priest is a legit priest and has the authority to speak on the religion, but the caveat—PARTICULARLY for non-Haitian priests—is that you speak with grace and a bit of elegance, especially around issues of identity when it comes to the identity of the people who allowed you into the religion.

There was a particular example that tapped into some anger and was the straw on the houngan’s back that made me decide to write this entire post. Unsurprisingly, it comes from a post about ‘bitasion’:

I missed it on my first read because there’s just so much to read, but when I saw it I had to put my phone down for a bit and go do something else. Out of all the stuff that’s here so far (and all the stuff to come), this is truly what made this post a reality.

How do you show up and do this in a country where the average weekly income WAS (because ain’t nobody really working right now when it is essentially civil war) less than $4USD a week for Haitians living in urban areas? Are you really going to put poor rural folks through the indignity of having to ask to cut some firewood? This is a brand new version of an outsider trying to show they are a gwo blan via power and control. These days, people in Haiti are used to it because it comes via missionaries and NGOs and the voluntourism of folks who show up to take pictures with orphans and hand out candy.

There used to be a different word for an outsider who punished folks working the land to survive: overseer. 

This is the re-institution of colonial systems, and it’s pretty ugly, particularly coming from someone who is not Haitian. You can certainly be the sort of priest who wants to punish rural folks for cutting some firewood and then brag about it, but should you be? Really?

But, the biggest issue about her saying that you must have a ‘bitasion’ in Haiti is that she seems confused about where her ‘bitasion’ actually is. First she was born in Cuba:

Then she was born in the DR with lots of family memories and history from there:

To be completely blunt, I have a hard time swallowing someone else’s requirements about a Haitian bitasyon when they do not have a consistent story about their own bitasyon.

Next to the thread of what Jessyka believes is true vodou is this thread of confusion. It’s visible when she talks about her ‘bitasion’, her background, and it leaks out in a lot of other places:

There’s so much here that it is basically word salad:

There is no religion in Haiti (or on the island) called Asogwe. Asogwe is a rank of initiation in the asson lineage

Any temple that only has one manbo or one houngan is not a thriving temple. The idea that a temple will only make one houngan and one manbo per generation is hilariously uninformed. Go into any temple in any part of Haiti, and you will find a wealth of houngans and manbos spanning generations because the ceremony doesn’t go without many hands made to do the work.

Yes, initiation costs money. I paid $8,500 plus airfare for mine, and, after going through it and going back to work the ceremonies each year since, I think my mother should charge more. I know exactly what was purchased with my money (I got an itemized list), and I know that my kanzo was done ethically and as equitably as possible—each person who worked on my behalf (at least two dozen houngans/manbos, innumerable singers, drummers, people who cooked, people who slaughtered animals, people who did laundry, people who drove, and on and on) was fed and was paid for their labor. No one should be asked to work for free, and no one should want a low-cost kanzo because no one should be wondering if corners were cut in the making of their head.

If she thought her kanzo was empty and meaningless, perhaps it was because she left before she could learn.

 It is true that I and other non-Haitians do not come from a bitasyon in Haiti, but I descend from my spiritual mother’s demanbwe (essentially a field of ancestors not tied to place), which is a key facet of why the asson lineage exists and why it has spread...there must be ancestral approval before extending the asson for ‘adoption’.

It is perversely amusing that someone who left an asson lineage less than six months after they completed their kanzo elects themselves as an expert who can dismiss literally hundreds of years of lineage and ancestral work and Haitians, all to sell some candles.

She has a core misunderstanding on what a “zombie” (zonbi in Kreyòl Ayisyen) is. A zonbi, at very base, is a soul held in servitude and controlled by the person who created it or by the lwa who owns it. They don’t mount people and they aren’t given in kanzo as she thinks. White folks and non-Haitians get mounted and it’s not uncommon. There’s even video out there, embarrassing as it may be, of me beginning to get mounted with a spirit. She’s uninformed and is speaking on things she has no experience in.

People should read these posts very closely. Remember when I said way up there that I like to watch people because they will show you who they are? This is Jessyka Winston showings us who she is.

She is out of ceremony less than a year. She walked from previous commitments after two months. Now, she is telling you how she will initiate you. She says over and over that an asson lineage initiation is a scam, but this is a blueprint to take money and do nothing.

She will initiate you only as a hounsi, but you’ll be the manbo of your ‘bitasion’ IF your ‘bitasion’--the land and the spirits passed to you by your family—tell HER you are valid.

If they tell her yes, she’ll give you a manbo/houngan initiation so you can go be a manbo/houngan of your own plot of land….but you are not a manbo/houngan in their temple because There Can Only Be One

You can’t fake it, because they will know.

There are no lwa involved in any initiation.

They’ll know if you’re lying, but it will also come out in divination.

You can only serve your spirits of your ‘bitasion’, but the spirits of theirs will recognize you as a hounsi

Ancestors cannot be sold or bought.

They are going to do things differently

So, to serve your ancestors as a priest, you must pay for two initiations, and it’s going to be pricey because, as she says, her work is VERY expensive:

She is willing to charge $157 for a non-specific half hour spiritual consultation, and will require a $28 fixed candle and a $12 headscarf be purchased for that as well, so it’s not going to be an initiation that tries to keep costs low.

That first initiation is to hounsi, which makes you a servant of the house. You’ll be expected to show up and help with things, and probably financially contribute.

If you have the desire to be a manbo or an houngan, she is the one who is going to speak for your ‘bitasion’, which is a plot of land but also ancestors, and tell you whether or not you have a future as a houngan or a manbo. If you do, it’s another initiation which you will pay for and probably pay quite a bit more because you’ll be a priest. When you start propitiating a bitasyon, that requires big ceremony to feed them...so animals, people to dispatch animals, cook the animals, drummers...all kinds of stuff. In Haiti, with the way things are going, you’re looking at more than $10K for that...and they’re going to have to do it for you, because you’re not a manbo or a houngan yet.

There are no lwa involved in this, because that’s a scam. There can’t really be any ancestors involved, because you can’t buy or sell them and so they can’t really do anything for you there except feed your ancestors….? Except she thinks that’s a scam, too:

Even after you’re a manbo or a houngan of your ‘bitasion’, you’re still a hounsi with them and still have a responsibility to their spirits..even though you aren’t from their ‘bitasion’. I guess that means you’re still dependent on them, right? It keeps you a servant?

But, what’s a little dependency and servitude when you’re a manbo or houngan of your own ‘bitasion’. They’ll assign you a ‘main ancestor’ to work with...but that’s not like a met tet that they would pick out of a magician’s hat. So, you’re good, right? Oh:

I want folks to go look at the Bonewits tool again. I want folks to have that open in one window, and this open in another. Read carefully. She is not yet saying she is doing this, but she is paving the road to make this look authentic. It’s not, it’s psychobabble word salad with a price tag attached. She is telling you right upfront—doing things differently, changing the fuckery—that what she is giving is not traditional Haitian Vodou. She is making things up and planning on bankrolling her retirement home on someone else’s back.

She doesn’t even have any support for this because she doesn’t consult elders, she just goes ‘straight to source’:

Haitian Vodou is based on family. Vodou-adjacent rites have hierarchy. If she is not adhering to this, she is not practicing Vodou, she is practicing Jessyka Winston with Haitian trappings and accessories. The religion changes and grows, but it is never at the behest of one individual and her husband—it is at the behest of the lwa, who we serve and there are ways that happens, which is well-documented over the last couple hundred years.

She is telling you who she is right now, PAY ATTENTION.

If you have been saving up for a $157 half hour consultation/$28 fixed candle/$12 moushwa value meal, you are better off throwing your money in a bonfire and cracking a beer. Don’t buy pretty packaging when the insides are rotten.

It is one thing to create this atmosphere of disinformation on your own, with your own name, but literally within the last 24 hours, she’s gone further:

Now she is naming specific people as not being real Haitian Vodou. The kicker? Manbo Carmel was the manbo Jessyka did kanzo with in 2018. In roughly a year, Jessyka has decided she has enough experience and knowledge to determine what is real and what isn’t, and what is Haitian Vodou and what is not. The sheer balls it takes for a non-Haitian to say that what a fairly well-known Haitian is doing is not Haitian Vodou is staggering. This is not brave or anything, it’s just unchecked and uninformed arrogance.

This is not the first time Jessyka has done this, though. Not that long ago, she came for my mother and the sosyete I’m initiated into:

She sings an old tired song and performs a busted old dance. The line that white people are too stupid to function is one that she likes to repeat regularly, and she keeps going in on cost like she won’t be asking people to pay for her back-issue-magazine-collage version of an initiatory experience. She brings up a rumor that’s been dead for years, and makes it clear (for folks who have been around for more than 10 minutes) where here info comes from.

The worst part is that this is what she did when someone shared their process, and she did it as a priest because she had already kanzoed at that point. That’s a level of immaturity that someone needs to be better than when they call themselves a manbo or an houngan. Operating on rumor and spreading gossip is what teenagers do, not priests who care when people are coming to them asking questions.

And, like, “not to talk shit..”? Come on. Come correct on stuff like that. If you are going to talk shit, then talk shit and own it and own that you are spreading rumors that you were not a party to because they have been floating around out in the ether since before you even thought about making kanzo.

 There are also ways to speak to and about elders when you think misaction or harm has been done. If you really thought Manbo Maude was out here hexing her children and hurting her lineage, there are ways to approach it. Like, she’s not hard to reach or hard to find; you could call her directly. I know she’s spoken about it to people before, one of them being me because I asked when I heard the rumor. Or, you could approach one of her numerous, visible children and ask them out of concern for their well-being and safety. Or, you could approach any of the priests who make their friendship with Manbo Maude and Sosyete Nago known, which is easy to track down on Facebook or in any of the documentation about what the sosyete does that’s online. But, when your goal is to defame so you can elevate yourself above all of that, this is what you do.

Since she proclaims she knows and understands Haitian Vodou, she should understand the culture Haitian Vodou has high expectations of how children and younger people treat elders, both in age and in religious settings. You don’t do this. You don’t go out of your way to character assassinate an elder, even if you think they are absolutely 100% fraudulent. You can disagree, you can say it politely, but you don’t act like an ill-mannered playground bully and you don’t pot-stir. This is basic cultural knowledge.

My initial reaction when seeing this was ‘well, she really tried it, didn’t she?’, and that was followed by showing it to a sibling or two and noting that if I ever did something like this, my manmi (Manbo Maude) would have my head on a platter. Like, I would get a phone call and the conversation would go something like “right or wrong, you do not do this. I raise my children better than this”. I have been very gently pulled up for much more trivial things, and when that has happened I have wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole because I was so embarrassed. Not because Manbo Maude embarrassed me, but because she sat across from me, looked me in the eye, and told me she expects better of me because she knows I can be better.

Sadly, Jessyka does not have this grace in her life, because, as noted above, she believes elders are a scam.

And yet, she keeps digging. This morning, she went in on a transwoman who pushed back at her assertions that everything that does not flow from Jessyka is fake news fake Vodou and called her a man:

Like, you can disagree with someone (and Blair, the person Jessyka is talking about, and I have disagreed) and still not disregard humanity and gender. Again, Jessyka is showing us who she is.

Then, she starts flexing, because she’s catching some heat:

First it was send the spirits, now it’s haul out the Masons. Maybe it’s watch out for little green army men outside your door? Like, folks who have the power don’t need to say they have the power. They don’t need to say their boys are coming, because their boys are already there. This is immaturity on display, and she should know better and be held to better by people who care about her…that freedom horn is just the sound of her own voice, echoing into the depths of Instagram, of all things.

 And none of these people who she keeps posting quotes from are speaking for themselves. Not her husband, not her Mason friends, nothing. Anyone who has spent five minutes in a group of Haitians knows that, when folks have something to say, they don’t need someone else’s mouth to say it.

And, like, why not try some chante pwen on your *Instagram story* when you need to look hard? Girl WHAT? I had some inappropriate laughter because This Is Not How Things Work:

She goes on at length about people not coming to her page to discuss with her…but why? Like, why invest that way when she deletes and blocks and throws Instagram temper tantrums? She doesn’t want to hear anything but what she knows, but desperately wants engagement. She tells Haitians how to be Haitian, but then doesn’t understand why the folks she aims at—houngans and manbos who have had the lwa on their head for longer than she has been alive—won’t engage with her.

There’s a really simple and straightforward answer that has come up already and that is really at the root of all of this: they don’t care. They are not invested in addressing whatever random, strung-together nonsense some blan who cannot describe where she comes from or how she came by what she has post on the internet, because their spirits and their lineages speak for themselves. Likewise, she keeps wondering why non-Haitians keep speaking up, and it’s because it’s the job of non-Haitians to collect their own. Why would anyone expect Haitian practitioners to dig in to this?

If someone did care and was invested, maybe she would have gotten some mentoring around this. Maybe they could have talked things through with her and helped her clarify what she was thinking and feeling so that she could post organized thoughts, instead of a stream of consciousness laced with words she might think give her an air of authenticity and threaded with threats and intimidation. Maybe someone could pull her up privately.

But, we are here. There’s a lot more and it looks like she is posting more by the minute. She couches it as it being co-written by her Haitian husband (maybe for authenticity?), but it is her name on it and no one else’s. She wants people to be scared, but there’s nothing to be scared of. She wants people to be intimidated, but there’s nothing intimidating here when you know how to see past the frothy, frenetic posting and really see what she is/is not saying. She wants to keep identifying people and why they are not valid in her eyes, she can keep going.

She’s probably going to try and tell me some things about myself or insist that she’s going to have her spirits kill me or that Masons are outside my house right now and….whatever. It’s okay. I know who I am.I don’t walk around scared.

But, I mean what I said in the beginning: Jessyka is not beyond redemption or repair. She can turn all this around in a heartbeat and make a different choice. The lwa have immeasurable grace for us and all our human failings and, if we can be humble, they can give that to us when we need it most. She has a spiritual sickness and deep spiritual problems, but that’s nothing that can’t be treated because we have the treatment.

We. Us. Community.

She has set herself apart, but she doesn’t have to be alone. We are a community, and if she reached out there would be an answer. Part of calling out bad behavior is calling someone in to heal. She can heal what is clearly a hurting heart and a confused head because we can heal a hurting heart and a confused head. When one suffers many suffer, and her suffering is palatable. I would invite her to bath with cool water and fresh basil, and to sit with Legba for a bit and look for the other path. We are always given two paths, and we can always make a change. Ginen promises us balance, but only if we seek it.

Today, for Jessyka, for folks reading this, and for the general atmosphere of dis-ease and confusion, I pray for cool heads and peaceful hearts, and for the knowledge that, if we are brought to the table, there is a unique place for all of us.

Blessings,

Alex Batagi/Bonkira Bon Oungan Daguimin Minfort

Pitit Antiola Bo Manbo, pitit Selide Bo Manbo, pitit LaMerci Bo Manbo

Sosyete Nago/Kay Manbo Maude, Jacmel and Boston

October 2019

[blacktotheblueside]

(Ex) Bobby

Summary: you just ready for bobby tah GO!!!! But he fine so you don’t know...

I was an actress that was challenging myself, I was obsessed with Korean dramas and wanted to play a part in one so my management brought me to South Korea around 3 years ago and in those years I was in a few kdramas, movies and in a public relationship with iKon’s one and only bobby. We’re currently broken up and it has just been released by none other than dispatch themselves, I’m sat with my management discussing how I’m gonna be bombarded with questions about my breakup and how I should handle it. I’m in a new drama as the main female lead and I’m going to be doing a ton of interviews he’s bound to be mentioned in a few.

I sigh as my team lay advice and all sorts. I’m very grateful I’ve been given this opportunity to act in Korea, I learnt the language when I first came and been working on it ever since hence why now I get more parts, this is the first time in one of the main characters. I just wanna focus on work but even while we’re broken up bobby still finds a way to be in my life.

~~~~

It’s 4am and my alarm goes off, I have sooo much schedules today. I don’t even try and dose off again like usual, I jump off the bed and get showered before my stylist arrives to dress me for the day...hair dressers, make up artist all that!

I’m dressed in a white baggy tee waiting for *KnockKnockKnock* they’re here.

We went with fresh faced makeup and my curly hair in a sleek low bun. For my outfit I’m wearing black skinny fit trousers and a white see through dress shirt, it’s baggy and it’s hanging off my shoulders teamed with a white bralette, yellow pump heels and yellow studs.

<My Schedule>

Inkigayo actor special mc w/ seo kang jun

Hello counsellor

Happy together foreigners working in korean entrainment

That’s all for today, I’m glad it was all shows where I won’t have to speak about bobby, all fun chatting.

~~~ Inkigayo ~~~

I walk through the corridor to get to my dressing room. I can speak korean but I still get so nervous before a show, I hate messing up! I have to get changed into something less formal, I go with a white dungaree dress with a pink off the shoulder top and pink high top converse. A long glittery chain for a belt and have my curls styled half up in a pony tail and the rest down my back.

I have 10 minutes left so I start making my way to the stage. I say hi at least 100 times on my way no joke, I bump into BTS on the way as the have a new comeback, I remained so calm I’m proud! I see kang Jun and we start chatting, we’ve met before at award shows and other tv shows, he tells me to not be scared and we head out and the crowd cheers!

We finish the show smoothly making me wonder why I was nervous to start with. I say bye to kang Jun and all the acts I see on my way out, bangtan we’re not there so I was a little disappointed I’m a huge fan of them. Next time I guess.

I’ve changed back into my first outfit and I’m on the way to my next schedule... I eat a famous inkigayo sandwich in the car while getting my hair re done and my make up touched up.

~~~ hello counsellor ~~~

I arrive just in time to say hi to all the hosts and guest...we make our way onto the set.

I’m a guest along with jay park and Jeonghan and scoups from svt. The boys show some of there new song. As for me they play a snippet of my new drama. They compliment my Korean a few times and ask about how I came over and started acting here.

Hello counsellor was so fun to shoot I got to role play with jay park on how to overcome an angry wife, I laughed and nearly even cried.

The show ends and I make my way to the car again. I change in the car thank God for tinted windows! I change into dark brown leather skirt and a light brown t shirt tucked in, with khaki sandal heels and earrings. My hair is in a high ponytail with my baby hairs styled (obviously by me)

~~~ happy together ~~~

This is the one I’m more excited for! I’ve always wanted to come on here. I make my way to my dressing room and now I’m already dressed and ready to go I’ve got time to kill, I am going out on a full stomach! I’m on my phone while I’m walking, my Social media all blowing up! I click on twitter to see my mentions all filled with articles of bobby.... curiosity gets the better of me, I see the headline “NETIZENS ARE QUESTIONING WHETHER iKON’S BOBBY AND ACTRESS Y/N ARE REALLY BROKEN UP AFTER BOBBY POSTS PHOTO OF A WOMAN’S SHADOW CAPTIONED WITH Y/N’S MOST FAMOUS LINE.”

I’m in the dressing room and I sit straight down before I fall or even worse get snapped looking at this!

I click the “read more” button and start skimming the article.

The picture is definitely me....what is he doing?! It was when we went on a date late at night near Han river, he snapped my shadow on the floor and the caption written in korean “it’s a butterfly”... omg it was a line from a movie I did, it was one of the highlights of the film as it was the tearjerker.

I don’t have time for this. My manager walks towards me and sits down ‘judging by your face you’ve seen the article.... don’t pay attention! Just go out there and pretend you’ve seen nothing’ he states. I nod slowly and sit there in silence, we broke up like nearly a month ago... why would he post this after not even trying to talk to me. Boys are so weird! I start playing games on my phone to take my mind off this distraction. I look at the time and see if I still have time for a snack bc of nerves, I don’t so I make my way to the couches. I stop and bow to the whole cast and sit on the seat, we’re all making small talk till it starts. In the interview they ask us foreigners about how we first came to Korea, how we learnt the language and first impressions of Korea when we first came. Another black person famous in Korea, Sam from Ghana was there we had so much in common. I laughed so much and we all had so much fun.

We spoke a bit about our work and I explained what my new drama was about and my character. We watched a little snippet again and some bloopers.

‘So y/n we hear you’re now single’ one of the hosts ask. Oh no....ok I’ve got this ‘yeah i am’ I smile acting like this isn’t bothering me at all. ‘Was that your first time dating a korean man?’ I nodded ‘it was’

Oohs and ahhs came from them all ‘so hows it different to guys back home?’ I think for a little bit ‘to be honest there’s not a lot of difference just the language difference I guess’ I say calmly. They nodded in agreement ‘were there any difficulties with the language barrier?’ I sigh to show them how exhausted I was in the beginning ‘oh yes, I couldn’t speak a lot of korean back when we first met. He could speak English though so I was good! But when I met his friends and family....’ I trail off a bit thinking about those times, No focus! ‘I was forced to speak so bit by bit I got better so it was awkward at first but it paid off in the end.... free korean lessons’ i say content with my answer. Sam pipes in ‘oh my I spent so much on korean lessons before I got into my first relationship!’ ‘Should’ve got in a relationship quicker’ I reply. We all laughed at his shocked face.

The show ends with a game where we guess a catchphrase by what the artist is drawing.

After the show me and Sam exchange numbers, he’s too funny to not have as a friend.

~~~~

I’m done for the day, I tell my manager I need food or else I’m going to collapse. We get pizza and fries, they drop me off home and I get undressed and ready for bed. I have a day off tomorrow so I planned to stay up late and watch my favourite shows but I’m exhausted. I hear my phone go off and it’s an unfamiliar number.... I pick up ‘hello?’ I hear breathing and just as I’m about to say hello again ‘hey y/n....’ bobby! After being together for so long I know his voice! After we broke up I blocked his number and got back to work... he probably changed it. ‘Hello?!’ Bobby says trying to see if I’m still there. ‘Bobby... what do you want?’ I get straight to the point, he sighs ‘y/n don’t...please... I just wanna see how you are! I watched you today on inkigayo’ is he being foreal? Calling as if we’re best friends catching up at the end of the day. ‘Bobby is there something you want?’ I’m tired ‘I-‘ I cut him off ‘I saw your Ig post, what was that for?’ I question. All I heard was silence, I had to pull the phone to my face so I could see whether the phone call had disconnected.

‘I wanted to talk to you...’ he started I stayed quiet he takes a deep breath ‘y/n I’m not gonna lie and say that this break up has been easy...’ oh no ‘...it really hasn’t! I just want you to give me...’ here he comes!!! ‘...one more chance’ he said it. I don’t know what to do, of course I still love him but we just to in love... so in love that we were just distracting each other from our jobs. ‘I... don’t think that’s the best option right now b’ I say quietly, I’m angry at him for ignoring me for so long and now he wants to pop up in his own time, when it’s convenient for him. ‘...I’m so busy these days... I don’t think I can handle a boyfriend, an ex at that.... right at this moment’ he sighs again, ‘you don’t think I’m busy too?’ He’s frustrated and quite frankly I don’t care ‘Don’t start with me bobby, you broke up with me, ignored me for how long and NOW you want me back?’ I state the facts to him. He groans ‘I know! And it was stupid of me, I made a dumb decision on impulse... and now I regret it every damn day!’

I re ask him ‘why did you upload that picture?’ ‘Because I wanted you to see it and the whole world to see that I’m not giving up on you, on our relationship! I don’t want anyone else’ my heart flutters a little and I hate him and me for being so weak to his sweet words.

‘I’ll think about it’ I tell him. ‘Don’t run and hide from me y/n!’ He says something I was sure I was gonna do ‘I won’t, I just need some time... this is too much for me’

‘I seen the trailer for your new drama.... I’ve been keeping up with you in the media, I’m proud of you’ I hear his smile through his words. I’ve been keeping up with him too, I won’t tell him that though ‘Thanks’ I whisper. After a few moments of silence ‘I’ll let you get to sleep now.... but don’t forget me, take everything I said into consideration.... I really want you back here with me baby’ omg I just want to forget everything and tell him to come here right this minute but that would be dumb. I just settle for a simple ‘ok’ we exchange good nights and I fall asleep really thinking about what’d it be like if we did get back together or were we better off separated.

Part 2 coming soon (black people timing)

[condemnthem]

i was sent testimony from someone who wishes to remain anonymous. speaking with others involved i can confirm this testimony is credible. this backs up claims others have made about ludo, and shows further his use of “mental illness” as a weapon.

My Testimonial

I’ve been off rp for a little while, but when I heard about this, my first thought was that I have to add additional validity to the things being said about Damien/Ludo. Luckily, I did not receive the worst of it because I shut that shit down almost immediately and Damien has proven to be a scared little chihuahua who acts big but recoils as soon as he’s given a piece of his own bullshit. I’m sure he’ll know exactly who I am, and the only reason I won’t post this publicly is because I honestly do not wish to deal with him harassing any of my socials.

I was in that former RPG with Damien, and if anything, I wanted to shut all assumptions and lies down. Prior to joining, I’d heard plenty of shit regarding said RPG, and after Damien’s departure, I’d come to learn that the people who talk shit about it are just whiny children who are angry they weren’t exceptions to the rules clearly posted.

When I signed the waitlist, Damien approached me with a secret sister role via messages. He came off as very nice, and I was still figuring my character out, so I thought it would be even nicer to come in with an established connection. He connected me to all the right people to talk to, and I was pretty impressed with the welcoming atmosphere right off the bat. He stated the only thing that was set in stone was 1) her place of birth and 2) her profession, and 3) that she was his long lost sister, and that anything else (storyline, additional relationships, playby) were all completely up to me. I don’t like filling roles because I hate being told what to do creative-wise, but he seemed to be pretty open-minded minus trying to sway me away from my playby choices with ugly tattooed chicks.

The first couple of weeks were okay. I realized there were a few people in the RPG that I’d known for a while, and when they realized what my role entailed, they warned me not to let Damien control me, because it was what he did with other people as well as LI’s and that was why certain people hated him within the group. I’d also been informed that he had been banned and snuck back into the group, and it had taken O (I’ll say O for Owner and L for the LI Damien later gaslighted who is now with O) some time before realizing it was him, but let him stay because despite outside opinion by pissy former members, O is actually pretty reasonable.

I tend to be a very bendy person, and don’t like upsetting people around me, so when Damien first started getting pissy if I didn’t answer within two minutes, I tried to be nice and apologize with whatever excuse I had. But I also have a limit when I am being hounded constantly for attention when I had enough to deal with in my real life. I was also aware that one of his LI’s (also a taken role) had left because of his annoying neediness, and that the LI he was with (who I’d become best friends with) was dealing with the same annoying hounding for attention. She tried to be nice about it to not hurt his feelings, and didn’t show me receipts, but the story had become pretty commonplace at that point. I’d also been warned about his need for attention and lack of boundaries. I made it very clear on many occasions that I hate talking about rl, and frankly do not care about what anyone else is dealing with irl because I’m constantly dealing with my own shit. I ALSO suffer from the same disorder as Damien and it has never occurred to me to use that excuse for shitty behavior. If I felt the need to dissociate, I simply disappeared rather than taking it out on others around me.

I really tried to make that role work for me because the character was all mine and I loved her, and mused her pretty hard. Damien started attempting to control my attempts at changing playbys by stating they didn’t look like him (fyi, Hayley Williams, Hannah Pixie, and Dua Lipa don’t look like Yungblud either). He’d get annoyed if I wasn’t around to do blast activities with him. My last straw was when I took a one week hiatus for some stuff I was dealing with irl and was only really speaking to someone I had an almost-LI ship with. Damien CAME at me, asking why I was ignoring him for this person and I lost it, stating that I was on hiatus and didn’t owe him any of my fucking time, and that I hate being hounded for attention. He immediately backed down like the pussy he really is when he realized he couldn’t control me, and apologized saying he has that disorder and abandonment issues. And I very nicely said I didn’t care about that, because it’s none of my business, and that I suffered from the same mental disorder and didn’t take it out on people as a result because I’m an adult.

I decided to leave the group and come back as another character. That was when he was dating L, the person who came forward a few times in the posts below. L and I have some basic stuff in common (musicals, whatever), and we’d fan girl over them in statuses, and Damien would clearly be very pissy about it. When I left the group again, he blocked me everywhere, and then when he saw I was returning yet again, he messaged me saying he was excited and that he was sorry for deleting me because he was “being petty and immature.” I acted like it wasn’t a big deal because I try to be civil with group members to foster a healthy atmosphere, but I wanted to avoid him at all costs because he’s a toxic person. When I approached him with a storyline idea, he said he was capped (he’s never capped because he wants to rope everyone in on his bullshit, but I assumed it was because he secretly hated me, which I was totally cool with because it meant I didn’t have to talk to him) and a few weeks later, he was kicked from the group.

I was still with RPG when he was booted, and everyone of the things the Owner said below is valid. I’d been told by more than one person that Damien would give them shit for something as simple as liking statuses and would try to polarize people from other members of the group. His obsession with staying in that group despite hating it is honestly the dumbest shit ever, and the fact that he allegedly stated for an LI shows how pathetic he really is. But truly, he’d snuck back in despite being banned, so what does that say about him?

He started getting pissy because he wasn’t allowed to do shit that were clearly stated as being against the rules. He kept adding nonsensical, impossible storylines to Damien to focus all the drama on himself. When I joined the first time, Damien was just a baker who’d been abandoned by his mother, and had a serial killer father. By the time he left, he had like, 3 long-lost siblings, was apparently involved in sex trafficking, spent some years in a psych ward, and was also a semi-popular musician despite being confined to the RPG’s town. O is honestly a very understanding owner, but refuses to be taken advantage of, and Damien didn’t like that.

But the catalyst was his harassment of someone via Snapchat for simply liking O’s status or something of that nature. She approached him with this information, and gave him a chance to explain his side, but he avoided her for quite some time (because, as I stated, he’s a little bitch) and when she finally gave him an ultimatum, he came at her stating that she was a shitty owner and everyone hated her, etc. etc. and trying his darned best to make it his mic-drop moment when really he was being an irrational idiot. He was really just mad that O didn’t let him do whatever the hell he wanted, and made it seem like that made her a tyrant. Imagine being in a group and signing rules that have made it work for several years at this point, only to think you are above them.

His current LI in his RPG was a former member of this RPG as his sister role after I left and I’d confided in her the things I’d dealt with, and she seemed to agree that he WAS controlling. Funny that despite this, she chose to follow suit (likely being manipulated by him) and join Ludo’s group anyway. When he made his current group, it was also no secret that he’d give people shit for not leaving RPG for his, despite all the bullshit he spews about being drama-free and not talking poorly about other groups.

I’m happy I never gave Damien my rl information, but I’d seen receipts of him harassing people on rl social media on more than one occasion. The most he did was try to give me a sample of his sub-par music that I didn’t listen to because, as I stated, real life conversation makes me cringe. Every one of the things said below share a common narrative, and I don’t know how anyone can fall for Damien’s bullshit to this day, but whatever.

Damien, do better and stop blaming your issues on your trauma. I’ve tried to become a better person IN SPITE of mine. The way you gaslight and use people is disgusting, and I think it displays issues beyond what life as dealt you.

p.s. I’m sorry if this is kind of all over the place, I sent it via mobile and didn’t look back to fix any typos and such.

xoxo, Someone who didn’t fall for his bullshit. Cheers.

[theteablogger]

Same shit, different day

Earlier this week, I received an email from Claire, one of the people who met Andy in Los Angeles. She’s the woman whom Andy complimented on her “trophy boyfriend”, who was actually Kyle Hill. She is also the person who first alerted Molly to the existence of the Andy awareness blogs. After another friend recognized him from LotR fandom and filled Molly in on some of his history, which led directly to Andy’s eviction from her home, Claire started looking for more information and found the AA blogs and tf-talk. 

On December 12, I posted about the “trophy boyfriend” incident and noted that Andy had in fact been aware of who Kyle was before that happened. Andy read the post and decided to reach out to Claire. She had blocked him on all of her accounts, or so she thought, but Andy looked around and realized that he was still able to contact her via her Facebook fan page, which she checks infrequently. On January 29, over a month after I made my post, he sent her the following message, which she didn’t see until this past weekend:

In the first line, Andy is referring to the days after he was evicted from Molly’s house, when he was trying to get Claire to meet with him and hear his side of the story. In her words:

I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt and believe those who say they have changed, or are trying to change, but there were just too many red flags with Andy for me to want to continue any contact at that point.

The meeting never took place.

Contacting someone to tell them he’s not stalking them, via the only account on which they’d forgotten to block him, more than seven months after they’d cut him off, actually does make Andy look a little bit like a stalker. I’m not saying that he’s stalking Claire and Kyle now, or that he was stalking them when he sent this message, or that he was stalking them last summer. I’m just pointing out the irony.

Also? I never said that Andy was stalking Claire and Kyle, or anyone else from that group of friends. Andy is concern-trolling, and he isn’t even being subtle about it.

What I actually said in my post was that in late spring/early summer, Andy had added a bunch of Molly’s friends on social media without ever having met them before, and had “thoroughly checked out” their accounts. I based this on Molly’s statement that he had done so as part of his attempt to insta-bond with her friend group. She further stated, “...he would speak about my friends, their lives and their interests and trials and tribulations as if they were very, very close friends [of his],” despite having had very little interaction with them on- or off-line. He’d only known Molly’s friends for about two weeks at the point that he was kicked out, and had only talked with the majority of them in group situations, so where did he get this information? From their social media, obviously. I would not and did not go so far as to call Andy’s social media trawling “stalking”, but I think that trying to use the information he found to create an illusion of intimacy with the group was very creepy, especially given all of his other questionable behavior at the time. Anyway, it’s extremely unlikely that he could have looked around to that extent without running into any of Kyle’s activity. 

I further commented that because Andy was a member of Project Alpha, which was streaming Kyle’s show as well as other content in which he appeared, Andy had probably seen him there. I still think this was a reasonable assumption, especially given that Andy’s pretext for suddenly realizing who Kyle was, was seeing him on Gather Your Party. 

Finally, I shared a screenshot of Andy retweeting a link to one of Kyle’s videos last April. This indicates that Andy had heard of Kyle over a month before he went to LA and started digging for information in Molly’s friends’ social media, at which point Kyle almost certainly would have come up on his radar again. It’s disingenuous to say that I extrapolated evidence of “stalking” from one little tweet, and I don’t believe Andy really thought I’d done that.

After assuring Claire that he wasn’t trying to re-establish contact (again, by sending her a message on the only account on which he wasn’t blocked) and describing my post in a misleading way, Andy said:

[The alleged accusation of stalking] frankly, would scare the shit out of me if I was you and I don’t want you to be and have never wanted you to be hurt.

This sentence was, in my opinion, an attempt to establish several things. Andy is sensitive and empathetic. Claire is (or ought to be) frightened by a supposed allegation that he might be stalking her. Andy cares about her and wants to protect her. And I, the anon blogger, am the real villain for causing Claire emotional distress in the process of trying to make Andy out to be the bad guy.

In the past, Andy has generally focused on how the “online rumor mill” or “pitchfork mob” is trying to destroy his life. A little over a year ago, he switched tactics, saying that CR fandom would be ruined for Meg if everyone didn’t back off and leave him alone. In other words, monitoring and reporting on Andy’s continued involvement with fandom was going to hurt his friend. (Meanwhile, other friends of his continued aggressively pushing the old narrative.) Now he’s claiming that pointing out his lies is harmful to the people he targeted, who have since cut him out of their lives!

He continued:

For whatever credibility I may have gained in honestly answering your questions this summer and in keeping our conversation private and keeping off social media, I give you my word that I honestly didn’t even click on that link.

Andy reminded Claire of how well-behaved he’d been--perhaps hoping that she’d forgotten how he sent Kyle a friend request days after the whole group cut off contact with him--and insisted that he didn’t actually watch the video that he retweeted. Okay. But my argument didn’t hang on whether he’d watched the video or not. The point, again, was that the tweet provided definitive proof that Andy was aware of Kyle and his show before he supposedly mistook him for a “trophy boyfriend”. It confirmed what I already had plenty of reason to suspect. Also, the date on that tweet wasn’t three months before he met everyone in LA, as Andy said; it was about seven weeks. Andy was kicked out of Molly’s house less than nine weeks after the tweet.

And unless you specifically invite it or our paths cross wholly coincidentally someday, that’s the last you’ll hear from me since the whole point is I DON’T want you afraid that I’m stalking you.

It was already evident that Andy wasn’t letting things go because he contacted Claire about my post in the first place. Here, he doubled down. Instead of just saying that he wouldn’t contact her again, he raised the possibility that she might want to reopen communication between them, or that they might “just happen” to run into each other. And he repeated that he didn’t want her to worry that he’s stalking her, when the circumstances in which he sent this message in the first place suggest otherwise. (Again, just noting the irony. I do not actually believe that Andy is stalking Claire or Kyle.)

Claire has read my post now because she googled it after receiving Andy’s message, but she hadn’t seen it before and certainly had not spent the last three months looking over her shoulder for Andy. As she put it:

This is unnerving for a few reasons - not only that he felt compelled to message me and defend himself on this matter (one which I wasn't even previously aware of), but that he sought out my fan page, the only medium on which I didn't have him blocked, and that he knew about your post to begin with, which shows that he still regularly checks the "awareness" blogs and/or googles his name, at least as recently as three months ago.  I was honestly content to let Andy fade into the reliquary of "that happened," but reading this set me on edge. Although he says it's not intention in his very first sentence, why even message me if he isn't trying to re-establish some sort of contact? 

Why, indeed.

Andy, just...stop it. While I don’t know Claire or any of her friends personally, I’ve talked enough with several of them to be aware that they’re not shy about confronting perceived threats to people they care about. If Claire had been afraid that you were stalking her, you would have heard about it and been told to back off. I think you know this perfectly well. Their actions upon finding out the truth about you last summer were a pretty big hint.

You need to respect people’s boundaries. If you have been told not to contact someone again, don’t fucking do it. Don’t look for any flimsy excuse to write to them. Don’t seek out avenues of communication that they’ve forgotten to close. Definitely don’t try to throw them off-balance with concern-trolling and manufactured empathy. Leave them alone. It’s that simple.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Wan High Weeping (Part 22)

He didn’t need the extra stress, he really didn’t and Suki was the only thing keeping him at bay. He was only one text from Katara away from stringing Jet up by the feet and bringing back medieval torture methods. “Look at this, Suki!”

 “I know.” She bit her lip. “I see it. But I can’t have my baby daddy in jail.”

 For the first time in a while, he was in no mood for jokes. “She said that he’s been following her home from school and that she would be all alone of TyLee didn’t start driving her!” He wanted to kick his own ass too, for not being around to escort her home. “If something happens to her, Suki…”

 “Nothing is going to happen to her.” Suki declared. “I promise, I won’t let anything.”

 Sokka ran his hands through his hair. He let his hand fall on Suki’s baby bump. “I can’t let him go after you either. You’re not thinking about the baby!” He puffed out a drawn-out breath. He didn’t mean to sound so accusatory. But Suki didn’t dispute him.

 He could see that she was on the verge of frustrated tears. She was a fighter and a protector, but the baby brought with it, a conflict of interests. “I don’t know how, but I can still protect her.”

 “I don’t know what to do, Suki. Maybe I should just go home, find a college closer to home so I can make sure Katara is okay and be closer to you and the baby.” He looked around the campus. It was all going so well here and he loved the campus, loved the people, loved the atmosphere…

 “Sokka.” Suki replied softly.

 “It’s fine, I can transfer. The semester is only a month in.” He stated.

 “You shouldn’t have to give up something that makes you happy.” Suki said. “Just because Jet can’t control himself. What about your parents?”

 “They have jobs. Katara is alone most of the time, especially with Toph out of school and Aang at soccer practice.” With a grim expression he added, “Jet knows that.”

 “Well maybe TyLee can do her some good.”

 “He followed them home!” Sokka reiterated. “I don’t think that he’s scared of TyLee.”

 .oOo.

 Katara slipped into her house and locked the doors. She’d draw the curtains shut if she thought that it would help, but he knew that she was home and he knew that she was alone. He knew that should would be for another few hours, until her father got home at 4:30. She texted Sokka frequently. Maybe she should just stay at school. It wasn’t to late to join the cooking club. She would have preferred theater, but the auditioning window had already passed. She made a mental note to talk to YengChen about joining the club. She could invite TyLee along and then neither of them would have to worry about Jet.

 Katara made her way up to her room, gripping her phone tightly. She was thankful to have found TyLee because TyLee understood. She hadn’t given Katara the full story yet, but apparently Jet liked to follow her around too.

Frankly, Katara was more scared for TyLee because he was more subtle about harassing her. Subtle to the point where no one noticed that he was troubling her at all.

 She really wanted to go on as though nothing was wrong. There were only a few more days until Halloween and she still didn’t have a costume. All of the harassment and stalking had killed the friendly spooky mood and made those stupid slasher flicks feel all too real. Jet had virtually ruined the holiday for her entirely. On top of his antics, Usha had taken to counting down the days to Halloween by photoshopping her face onto a new ‘sexy’ costume for each day. By day fifteen, Katara stopped checking her social media pages altogether, she was tired of seeing her face plastered onto sexy maids and cops.

 She heard a car pull into her driveway and looked at her clock. It was only 3:27. Her heart began to thunder in her chest. She shot Sokka a quick text, letting him know of the situation.

 He replied almost immediately. ‘Dammit, Katara, call the cops!’

 A good idea on paper but she knew that he’d either be speeding off or in her house by the time they arrived. That is if they took her seriously at all. And she texted such to Sokka who responds with an, ‘at least report it to them so they know.’

 Katara really didn’t see the use. The dots reappear on her screen. She read the message, ‘do you want me to head over there? I can tell my professor that I have an emergency.’

 ‘You won’t make it on time.’ She texted back.

 She couldn’t help but shiver. She crept down the hall making as little noise as possible. A glance out the window, reveals Jet standing in her driveway. He shot her a cocky wave. She retreated into the hallway and pulled down one of her father’s decorative tribal spears. “Sorry, dad.” She mumbled, knowing very well that his arctic wall décor was off limits.

 Her phone buzzed and she prayed that it was Sokka. A message from TyLee, appeared and she breathed a sigh of relief. The girl wanted to know if she would go costume shopping with her. Katara replied, ‘yes, can you come by as quick as possible?’

 With any luck, the sound of a new car would drive Jet away. If her luck was poor, she realized with faint horror, she had just put TyLee in the firing range. She smacked her forehead, how could she be so stupid and selfish?

 She was about to text a never mind when TyLee replied, ‘great, I’m just finishing my volunteer hours at the animal shelter, I’ll be there in five.’

 She heard the shattering of glass and a bead of anxious sweat trickled down her forehead. Oh God, he’s in the house. She clutched the spear tighter, wishing she knew how to use it. She texted Sokka to tell him that Jet was in her house.

 .oOo.

 Sokka punched the wall, his face was twisted and distorted with more rage than she had ever seen on him and truth be told she was afraid. Suki understood perfectly why he was in such a state but she couldn’t help the darker thoughts that rose in her head.

 What if, somewhere down the road, that rage was directed at her.

At their baby.

 She tried shaking the irrational thoughts away. No, this behavior was the result of not being able to protect loved ones. She tried to turn her thinking around, telling herself that, this is how he would fight for she and their child if he had to.

 He threw his fist into the painted bricks again. And he was going for another round. That time, she caught his hand. “You’re going to hurt yourself, stop it.”

 “He’s in the fucking house Suki!” Sokka roared.

 She hoped that no one else could hear the commotion, God forbid they got the wrong idea.

 “If he hurts her…” Sokka’s breathing was growing erratic. “If he hurts her I don’t know what I’ll do.”

 “Let’s go outside.” Suki suggested. Some fresh air might do him some good.

 “I gotta go home, I gotta…”

 She squeezed his shoulders more firmly. “You have to calm down. You can’t help Katara if you’re not calm.”

 His phone buzzed and Suki’s heart leapt, she hoped that it was some good news.

 .oOo.

 TyLee arrived before the police. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the girl’s voice. “Katara?” It was riddled with concern. “Katara, are you okay?”

 Katara released the breath she had been holding and wiped away a few silent tears. “I’m fine.” Her voice was so shaky. Just as shaky as the legs she heaved herself up on. “If you’re not inside, you can come in.”

 “The door is locked, but I guess I can fit through the widow.”

 Katara thought it was a jest until she came downstairs to find the girl squishing herself through the relatively large hole in the window. Katara knew that the girl was flexible, but that was just insane.

 “What happened?”

 “Jet.” She replied glumly.

 TyLee stooped down to pick up the miniature bolder Jet had chucked through the window. She grimaced.  

 “What?”

 TyLee turned the large rock over. Painted in red was a threat; ‘windows are pretty easy to break, you might as well open the door.’

 She wanted to cry all over again. She distracted herself by letting Sokka know that Jet had only broken the window, that he had never been inside at all. She added that TyLee was there and the cops would be there too.

 Not that they ended up being much use at all. She hadn’t expected them to be. She watched them snap photos of the rock, the message on it, and the broken glass. “But no one was inside of the house?” The taller cop spoke.

 Katara shook her head. “But look at that, he practically said that he would be…”

 “He?” Asked the smaller female cop.

 “My stalker. Jet! The one I’ve been telling you about!”

 “How do you know it was him?” Asked the woman

 “For all we know, it was just some bratty neighbor pulling a nasty Halloween prank.” The man concluded.

 “Happens all the time around this time ‘a year.” The female added

 Katara wanted to scream. “No! It’s him, I saw him out there.” She was so furious with herself for not snapping a picture of him standing in her driveway; once again, she could prove nothing.

 “Did you managed to get a picture of him?”

 “No!” Katara shouted again. “I didn’t think about it. But he. Was. There.”

 “He was totally there.” TyLee put in.

 “And you saw him?” The female asked.

 TyLee bit her cheek. “Well no, but…”

 “If you weren’t present then you can’t be a witness.” Spoke the male.

 “He does this kind of thing to me too.” TyLee argued.

 “Have you reported it?” Asked the female cop.

 Her silence was an answer it itself. Now Katara wanted to tear her hair out. What would it take to get them to believe her? Would she have to go missing? Would she have to die? TyLee grabbed her hand and pulled her into what was probably meant to be a comforting embrace. Maybe she was going to have to move. She didn’t want to leave Aang, Suki, and Toph behind. She didn’t want to leave town, but that was starting to sound like the safest option.

[mindofambitions-blog]

PUNISH A MUSLIM DAY

Tuesday 3rd April 2018. Punish a Muslim Day. 

As, you all must be aware already, as its gone viral on the internet across social media sites and little coverage on the news and I mean online news article only regarding ‘Punish a Muslim’ day in the UK on 3rd April 2018.

At first, this may have been taken lightly as only a troll, but now unfortunately even in this day and age, in 2018, Muslims have to live in fear, we are genuinely scared as we don’t even know what is to come on this day, therefore have been advised by the Muslim community to stay safe, and not even go outside, not going to university or work, or anywhere at all. This is a violation of our human right of freedom of religion. But where is the government condemning this and where are the major news channels covering this, and most disappointing for me, as a university student, even the university has not taken any action. Usually, for any situation such as post Brexit, the London Bridge Attack, the manchester attack or any other threats during 2017, we received emails from university to stay safe and advice, However, this time round when its a particular threat to MUSLIMS, I have been given the impression its been ignored and taken lightly, frankly no one cares. If they’re not Muslim they don’t care. I understand, the situations mentioned above did actually happen, but we don’t know if anything will happen tomorrow...but what is the point of sorry emails or stay safe emails after a tragic event is occured, when there should be precautions, warnings and advice given beforehand to prevent it to happen. It makes no sense, but at the same time I guess no one cares.

Also, the most ironic thing is. on this ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ flyer....each attack is rewarded with ‘points’. POINTS????? What are points???? Is this a game? Are we playing fortnite? COD? Honestly, this is ridiculous, it isn’t even money or some emotional extreme nationalist right-wing reward but POINTS......This just shows how ridiculous and stupid this person is...but although this makes us laugh and makes us think we should not take it seriously, we know out of thousands of people there will be at least a handful of disgusting, lowlife, bigots who will use this opportunity to take action and attack or create any type of discomfort towards Muslims. So, its always better to stay safe than be sorry in this current climate. In this state of rising Islamophobia and racism, there is no point taking a risk.

And, sadly, you know whose the most vulnerable again...yes MUSLIM WOMEN. The most disadvantaged and Muslim minorities. Especially, Muslim women who wear a hijab, unfortunately in this case, we are the ‘representation’ of our religion, we are the easiest target for these vile people. We’re always in fear of someone pulling scarf off or pushing us or verbally abusing us in public. And, the worst thing as a result Muslim women are the ones who are judged the most from the outside world as well as within their own communities. As, due to fear if Muslim woman decides to take her hijab off, to feel a bit safer in this current climate, so she is not judged based on her religion, her own people, the Muslim community itself will start judging her. Ironically, its always the men when they have no idea how it feels. they just stand there and dictate the rulings but cannot empathize with Muslim women in the west, as they are judged by EVERYONE, hijab or no hijab Muslim women will always be judged. However, I could talk about this topic forever, right now we need to take precautions and stay safe. 

So, i’ve rambled a lot and probably missed out some points I wanted to make, but the main thing is TUESDAY 3RD APRIL 2018, ALL THE UK MUSLIMS PLEASE STAY SAFE. TAKE CARE. 

[sapphicscholar]

A/N: Don’t hate Lucy! Eventually this will all help Alex find her way out of the closet from behind all those leather jackets...

Chapter Text:

“You okay?” Kara whispered, catching sight of Cat’s clenched jaw.

“Just dandy,” Cat muttered. “The man-child one row up and to the left doesn’t even have the common courtesy to try to hide the fact that he’s taking my photo, and I’ll be stuck with him on this godforsaken airplane for the next few hours while we fly out to bumblefuck nowhere.”

Even though Cat had kept her voice quiet, Kara leaned in to reply; they were in no need of a second scandal. “Switch seats with me. I’ll block his view.”

“What?”

“You can have the window.”

“But you said looking out at the view from up here was your favorite part of flying.”

Blushing, Kara remembered having to clarify that she meant on a plane, though Cat had seemed even more confused at the clarification. “There’ll be plenty of flights in our future.”

Eventually Cat conceded and moved in a seat, smiling gleefully at the look of disappointment that flashed across the would-be paparazzo’s face when Kara leaned forward and blocked his shot.

“Plus, we’re stopping in Chicago first, so you can ease into the Midwest,” Kara teased.

“Ah yes, with that travesty they call pizza.”

Kara snorted loudly. “Sorry, didn’t know you’d be so passionate about the matter. If I remember correctly, I thought you said something about pizza not being healthy enough to qualify as food.”

“If I’m going to indulge, it may as well be good,” Cat huffed. “I might have made California my home, but I started out in the Northeast, which means I know the difference.”

“How’s this for a trade? You smile big for the reporters and eat the deep dish pizza, and I promise to take you for amazing food at Alex’s favorite food truck.”

“You want me to eat food cooked and served from the back of a truck?” Cat looked downright incredulous.

“C’mon, you’ll look like one of the people.”

“I hate this.”

“Don’t let them hear you,” Kara whispered, her tone lilting and far too cheery.

---

Back at campaign headquarters, Alex basked in the relative calm after the storm of activity that weekend and the rush that always came with last minute changes—in this case, keeping James back at campaign headquarters to stay on top of the press for the first week before joining Cat and the team when they flew down South. Alex had gotten confirmation from Kara that everyone arrived at the airport on time, then a string of emojis before she had to switch her phone to airplane mode for takeoff. With Vasquez and Winn gone and James tied up with interviewers all day, Lucy had been in and out of her office a few times, so it was no surprise when she came back again with two coffees in hand.

“Before you get your coffee…”

“What?” Alex whined. “You don’t get to taunt me with caffeine and then take it away.”

“Kara and I were talking…” Well, really Lucy had been talking at Kara, but it still counted.

“About?”

“You.”

“Rude.”

“How long has it been since you went out on a date?”

“I don’t know,” Alex answered reflexively. In fact, she was fairly certain it had been over two years, save for a fake date or two to gather intel. “It doesn’t matter. I’m busy with work.”

“We’re all busy, Alex. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t indulge in a bit of self-care.”

“How is a date self-care? It takes work and energy and time that I don’t have.”

“Well, yes,” Lucy conceded, dropping into one of the chairs now that it seemed like this could be a very long conversation. “But it also has rewards, you know.”

“I’ve yet to experience those rewards,” Alex huffed, reaching for the coffee cup. She’d gone out with guys that seemed nice enough, but somehow by the second or third date, they were just as exhausting as the terrible ones and left her craving the solitude of her own bed in her own apartment without the expectations of someone else weighing down on her at all times.

Lucy held it just out of reach. “Just let me set you up on one date. If you don’t like him, fine. But you need to try.”

“If I say yes, do I get my coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes.”

Lucy handed over the cup. “Don’t forget, I’m a lawyer, so I’ll totally hold you to it.”

“Don’t forget, I’m trained in several forms of martial arts and know how to use dozens of weapons.”

“Is there an end to that threat?”

“I prefer to let your imagination run wild,” Alex shot back with a wicked smirk.

“Yeah, yeah. Just be nice to the man.”

“Wait, you already know who you’re setting me up with?” Alex’s interest was piqued, even if she didn’t really want to go on the date at all. Lucy nodded. “Who?”

“Why? So you can stalk him and find out everything there is to know about him and decide you hate him before you’ve even met?”

“It sounds perfectly logical to me.”

“No.”

“I hate you.”

“I’ll text you details when I have them!” Lucy called over her shoulder, already texting Vasquez and Kara the good news.

Grumbling to herself, Alex flicked on the television in her office, figuring she could catch up on the news as an easy way to pass the time on a relatively slow day. Cat’s responses had been getting decent traction so far, and the social media team had been working nonstop to keep the best articles about Cat front and center. She tuned in just in time to hear someone giving a brief recap of the weekend’s events and was pleased to find that it wasn’t nearly so damning an account as the same newscaster had given just two days earlier.

Kicking her feet up on the desk, she listened as they went through the other candidates, checking off who had visited Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and detailing what they’d done there. Four candidates—two of the Democrats, one of the Republicans, and some third party candidate who’d barely even made the news—had dropped out of the race, even in the midst of the scandal, which boded well for them. General Lane and Senator Crane had spoken together at some anti-immigration rally. Alex scratched a note to herself about a potential Lane-Crane ticket down the line. They’d sound like they emerged straight from the pages of a Doctor Suess book, though a decidedly devious one if they stuck to their platform. Siobhan had gone to an EMILY’S List event. Alex made a note to ask Kara to make sure the organization was still firmly backing Cat; she wasn’t overly concerned, given that they had already made an official endorsement for the Grant campaign, but it was good to keep everything in line.

As the 10 o’clock news rolled into the 11 o’clock news, Alex got up and stretched, intent on wandering around the office to see who else was in, maybe scare some of the interns and new researchers who might have been slacking off in Cat’s absence.

Before she could leave, she caught sight of Max Lord’s face swimming into view and had to repress her instinct to gag. Turning up the volume, Alex listened to a new newscaster introduce him with glowing accolades as though his business had somehow saved an already thriving state.

“Thanks for that, Cindy, though it’s people like you that keep this city accountable.” Alex’s lip curled up in distaste at the smarmy way he smiled at her. “I’m here today under circumstances that I don’t think any of us could have expected: the wake of the scandal surrounding Cat Grant—a woman near and dear to so many of us in California.”

“It certainly took us by surprise!” the woman—Cindy, Alex remembered—interjected. Alex scoffed at the idea that she was surprised; the news outlets had more notice than anyone else.

“I spent this past weekend watching coverage and sorting through everything that was released for myself. I wouldn’t want to rely on secondhand coverage—no matter how great it might be.” Alex found herself grabbing a pen just to have something that wouldn’t cost a fortune to replace to throw at the wall. “As much as I have supported Cat—both as a governor and as a personal friend—I find the things we’re learning about her campaign and her business to be, if I might speak frankly, quite troubling.”

“They did seem to rock the boat—really upset the image she’s cultivated for herself over the years.”

“An image founded in action!” Alex yelled at the screen as though they could hear her.

“And so, it is with a heavy heart and a firm sense of duty toward my country that I am announcing my candidacy for President of the United States of America.”

“Lucy!” Alex roared, listening as the sound of stiletto heels came clicking down the hallway. When she got into Alex’s office, Alex just gestured at the screen, where a rolling banner now announced Max’s candidacy.

She’d missed whatever Max had said next, but caught Cindy looking slightly curious, if a bit confused. “And you’re running as a Democrat?”

“I know, in what world does a libertarian run as a Democrat?” Max laughed. “Then again, ask anyone and they’ll tell you a California Republican is still more liberal than a Texas Democrat.” Cindy laughed along with him that time. “But in all seriousness, I think the Republican Party has for too long held a monopoly on certain ideas. As anyone can see from the kind of work I do in my labs or the organizations I’ve donated to over the years, I lean left and strive toward progress and change in so many significant ways, even if I think that the government shouldn’t always be the ones driving that change.”

“Well, that sure does come as a surprise. Should we expect to see you out on the campaign trail yourself now?”

“I’ll be out with everyone at the Iowa Democratic Fundraising Dinner this week, and I’m sure you’ll start to see my name popping up in coverage soon enough.”

“What the fuck?” Lucy’s jaw hung open as she watched the news shift over to commercials—specifically to a commercial for Max’s campaign funded by a new super PAC, “Businesses for Progress.”

“Dirk,” Alex growled, putting together the mysterious phone call with a promise for an 11 o’clock timeslot, the ambiguous promise about “having a guy” that Kara had overheard after the donor meeting. “That fucker.”

Before Alex could do anything rash, Lucy put a hand on her arm. “Okay, let’s think this through. Honestly, will he get any of the voters Cat would have gotten?”

“He might,” Alex admitted. “On Wall Street and business issues she ran a bit closer to the centrists, but he might claim those votes, or at least some of their big donors, especially if he runs the kind of dirty campaign I suspect he will.”

“Do you think Cat knows yet?”

“They’re still up in the air for another half hour.” Alex pulled out her phone and sent articles along with a few lengthy messages to Kara so that they’d get the news before some reporter asked about it and put a surprised Cat in the spotlight, leaving her looking uninformed. “God, so much for a quiet week.”

“Look, it’s not another scandal. It sucks, but he’ll be bound by the same kind of rules Cat is, which puts them on an even playing field.”

“Except it doesn’t,” Alex said bitterly. “He’s a white man without the burden of a scandal weighing on him already.”

“Let’s see how he does in Iowa before we panic.”

---

Kara yawned and rolled out her shoulders as she waited for her phone to restart while they stood away from the crowds beside the baggage claim carousel. Watching as little red notification numbers popped up, she was shocked to see dozens of texts and emails from campaign headquarters. She skimmed through them quickly, growing increasingly incredulous.

“Um, Cat?”

“Hmm?”

“We have a problem.”

“Did those emails leak?” Cat hissed.

“No! No, not that big of a problem—it’s just a new candidate.”

“Oh,” Cat let out a sigh of relief. “That’s fine. They’ll have already missed the first debate, so they’re coming in at a disadvantage.”

“Um, well, that’s the thing. He’s already well-funded…by Dirk.” She kept Alex’s profanity-riddled messages to herself, though she managed to find the confirmation that he was funding Max’s super PAC among the obscenities.

Cat’s eyes flashed up at Kara, and she swore she saw red. “Excuse me.”

“Max Lord is running for president now. He’s saying he didn’t want to, but he was persuaded to join because you had too much baggage now with the scandal and all.”

After a moment of two of stunned silence, Cat found herself laughing—a small chuckle at first that grew into something larger and almost uncontrollable. “I just…of course he is.”

“Are you okay?”

“Just swell, Kiera. My conniving ex-donor is funding a campaign for my ex-boyfriend to run against me for the role I’ve been preparing for my entire adult life.”

“Your ex-boyfriend?” Kara tamped down on the surge of jealousy she felt coursing through her veins. She tried to convince herself that it was just righteous indignation; Cat could clearly do better than Max. She ignored the small voice yelling that she would have been better for Cat by a landslide.

“We all make mistakes.”

“Well yours is going to be at the fundraising dinner in Des Moines this Thursday.”

“Fabulous.”

“Let’s get out of the airport so we can talk freely, okay?”

“Fine,” Cat huffed.

---

After a strategy session in the hotel room with Kara, James, and Alex via Skype, Cat felt slightly better. Kara had spent the ride back reading through Max’s campaign website at a pace that had to have set some kind of world record and had already identified several weak points in the barebones policies he had laid out, while James focused on how they could adjust Cat’s public image to position her as the stronger candidate not only opposite Justin but opposite Max now too, on the off chance that his campaign took off. And Alex had spent her time digging up as much dirt on Max as she could find, though Cat asked her to hold off on personal life research unless it became necessary. There was no doubt in her mind that Alex was already doing the research, but at least she could keep her hands clean for now.

“Ready to have some of that famous deep dish pizza you love so much?” Kara teased, trying to lighten the mood.

“Can’t wait,” Cat deadpanned.

On the ride down to Gino’s East, Cat listened as Kara and Michael, the head of their Illinois headquarters, hit her with facts about how they’d been polling out there and what topics to talk about (as well as the ones to avoid). Kara held up the phone with James on speaker to contribute as well.

“The scandal hit, but it wasn’t as big of a story here as it was in other places,” Michael informed Cat. “At least in Chicago, you’re still polling ahead of Justin, who’s kept his second-place standing.”

“And Chicago is already a deep blue pocket in a pretty blue state,” Kara chimed in, “so you won’t have to worry too much.”

“I scheduled a photo op at the Chicago Southside NAACP offices,” James reminded Cat, his voice crackling slightly through the speaker.

“Make sure to hit home on your points about education, especially making sure public schools in low-income neighborhoods are receiving adequate funding.” Kara handed over a half-page of bullet points their team had put together with statistics about funding disparities between schools that catered to primarily white neighborhoods and others in communities populated by first- and second-generation immigrants and people of color.

Michael cut in again. “And talk about police oversight—make some of the points you made at the debate even stronger and clearer. Your meetings with Black Lives Matter coordinators went over well, but you can’t let a meeting be the only thing you do.” Cat nodded along. “I know you haven’t really gone on the attack yet outside of the debate, but Justin’s poor record on just about everything related to race is what’s keeping you above him here. It might not play as well outside of the city, but while you’re here, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to hit him on that a little.”

“Now that he’s made some statement about my record on women’s rights when he has absolutely no room to judge, I think it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” Cat admitted.

“Plus, that fundraising dinner is when things start getting a bit more heated anyway.” Kara caught Cat’s expression of surprise, though she hid it quickly. If Cat expected her to be just as naïve as she was years ago about how these things worked, she had another thing coming.

“We’re just about here, ma’am,” Vasquez announced, slowing down the car. “Do you want me to do another lap around the block?”

“No, I’m ready.”

After one last moment of calm, Cat plastered a broad smile on her face just in time for Vasquez to pull open the door.

“Hello, Chicago!” she waved, feeling her smile grow more genuine at the sight of homemade “Grant for President” signs held aloft and local newspaper reporters lining the area outside Gino’s.

She signed a few posters and took a few softball interview questions on her way in, finally making it into the restaurant and taking a seat alongside a few of the members of the Chicago Board of Education who she’d arranged to meet with for lunch. They all smiled for more photos, then did a second round when their pizza was delivered.

“Is this your first time with deep dish pizza, Miss Grant?” a young reporter asked.

“It is,” Cat admitted. “But it already smells delicious!”

Cat reached out and accepted the offered plate, motioning for her dining companions to go ahead and get some as well. “And you know what? Can we order a second pizza for my campaign staff? They work so hard—they deserve some of this famous Chicago food too!”

“Well played,” Kara muttered, her voice barely a whisper in Cat’s ear.

Fighting back the surge of excitement at exactly how close Kara was, Cat nodded, then turned ever so slightly to her under the guise of asking what toppings they wanted. “Will I be mocked and memed if I eat this with a fork and knife?”

Stifling a giggle, Kara shook her head. “No, you’re fine.”

Once everyone at her table had a slice in front of them, Cat cut into hers and popped a bite into her mouth before giving some quote about how they might make a deep dish fan out of her yet. “I should bring my son here. You know how much food teenage boys eat. Maybe one of these could actually keep him full for more than an hour,” Cat joked, smiling at how well her comments seemed to be going over.

With the pleasantries out of the way, Cat turned back to the Board of Education members, who had brought with them a local principal and teacher who both joked about loving the chance to get away from the school cafeteria for lunch. While they ate, they talked about Cat’s platform, and she hit home hard on equitable funding and equal opportunities for all students. But then she turned the conversation over to them, asking what their experiences had been. “I can read all the articles and reports, but it’s never quite the same as getting to hear from the people who live it every day. So you tell me: what would help you?”

By the time they finished, Cat was fairly certain she could count on their support in the election, and Kara was already smiling at the great publicity they were getting from a photo James had taken of Cat laughing out loud, a half-eaten slice of pizza on the plate in front of her, looking every bit the part of the down-to-earth candidate invested in the needs of local communities.

---

Back in DC, Maggie strolled down the hallways, feeling the shift in mood from the weekend with good publicity rolling in. She’d been pleased to see Cat at the NAACP offices dropping in some of the quotes and figures she’d sent to Kara that morning. “Hey, Danvers,” she greeted with a little knock on the door.

Blinking rapidly as her eyes readjusted after looking at screens for hours on end, Alex managed a quick hello back.

“Need help with something?”

“No…just trying to get ahead of the new Lord campaign. Didn’t really expect another challenger this late in the game, especially a well-funded one.”

“Ugh, he’s such an ass.”

“He really is.”

“Oh, hey look! Something we agree on,” Maggie joked, actually earning a smile from Alex.

“Yeah, yeah. Is there something you needed?”

“I just wanted to say hey. See if you were still up for a run tomorrow morning. If you’ve got too much going on with Max, though, it’s totally fine. I get it.”

“No, I promise, if anything, this makes me want to run more. I mean, hitting things would be preferable, but running will do.”

“Sparring does tend to help more with that particular impulse,” Maggie conceded.

“You box?”

“A little. Did some wrestling back in high school after I moved.”

“One day I might just take you up on it if that’s an offer.”

“Yeah? Alright, Danvers. We’ll see what you’ve got.”

Alex laughed and shook her head. “Let’s see if you can even keep up on our run first. I’ll meet you at your place at 7—sound good?”

“Uh, sure. I can meet you somewhere if it’s easier.”

“Nah, it’s fine. It’ll be my warm up.”

“Alright, well, I guess I’ll see you then.”

---

After a moment’s indecision, Kara knocked lightly on the door to Cat’s hotel room.

“Yes?” Cat answered the door, her dress pants having been replaced by sweatpants, but her blazer and blouse still on.

“That’s a good look,” Kara teased. “Bet it would play well in the media.”

“Ah yes, just the message I want.” Cat rolled her eyes but opened the door further to allow Kara inside.

“I brought tea—thought you might want something warm after a long day out in the Chicago fall weather, which is kind of like DC deep winter…”

“Thank you.” After a pause, she added, “You really don’t need to keep doing these things.”

“Cat, it’s my job to make the campaign go well. And that means keeping you healthy and happy.”

Cat bit back any and all inappropriate comments about things that would make her happy—a long list that started with Dirk’s head on a silver platter and ended with a delightful blonde campaign manager in a less-than-professional situation.

“Ready for the drive to Davenport tomorrow?” Kara asked, curling a leg under herself as she settled down on the less uncomfortable looking of the two hotel chairs.

“Actually, I wanted to see what you thought of going to Iowa City first. It barely adds an hour to the drive.”

“Um, yeah, I guess. You need to be back in Davenport for your meeting with the manufacturing union reps tomorrow night, but I think otherwise things should be moveable. Maybe check with James first?”

Cat pulled out her phone and quickly sent a text to James confirming that things could be moved before turning back to Kara. “I know we’re doing a morning photo op at the Center on Halsted with some of the local LGBTQ groups, but I thought we might drop in for the Iowa City Coming Out Day events too.”

“Are you, uh, coming out? I mean—that’s great! And I certainly wouldn’t say no—not that it would be my choice. But, um, maybe we should check in with Alex and James to figure out how to word things in the wake of…you know, everything.”

“You’re rambling.” Kara stopped talking, quickly shutting her mouth and looking to Cat. “I’m not coming out. I’m a politician recognizing a community I have publically supported for many years. And it’s all well and good to do so in Chicago, but I thought it might have a bit more of an impact in a state that isn’t quite so blue, even if the town itself is a bit more progressive.”

“Oh,” Kara breathed out. “That sounds like a great idea.”

“I’m aware.”

Kara just rolled her eyes. “Let me get James on this—”

“No need. I think it’ll be better to have it be more of a surprise visit. It’ll seem less staged.”

“I suppose plenty of people will take pictures and post them anyway…”

“And if they don’t, I do employ a full staff of people who I assume can take a few basic photos while we’re there.”

“Right, yeah. So, should we get you some rainbow t-shirt? Glitter? Pride flags?”

“I think my planned suit will be just fine,” Cat replied, although she wasn’t able so suppress the fond smile. “I won’t stop you if you want to dress yourself in all sorts of gaudy, glittery rainbows, though.”

“It’s just a shame I left my Pride outfit back in DC.” Of course, there were more than a few ways she could go get it and be back in plenty of time, but it didn’t seem worth the risk.

“And what might this famous outfit involve?”

“Well, I do have lots of glitter and some rainbow temporary tattoos. Then I got this Wonder Woman crop top and…” Cat’s mind just about shorted out at the image, and she promptly lost track of the other things Kara was saying. Because now all she could picture was Kara Danvers and the abs she was fairly certain were hiding beneath those hideous cardigans and Loft blouses, maybe coated in glitter—an offense she might actually willingly excuse, given the right circumstances.

“Yes, well, I should really be heading to bed.”

“Oh, sorry! Lots to do tomorrow! I’ll see you in the morning.”

Cat quickly shut and locked the door behind Kara before changing the rest of the way into pajamas and groaning into the pillows. Eventually her sleeping pills managed to win out against the tempting images swirling through her imagination and the rush of blood that left her heart racing and her skin feeling heated to the touch.

[segadores-y-soldados]

Personal and Fic Updates

Hey everyone!

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these personal update messages.  I’m trying to get my stuff in order but life continues to outpace me, it seems.

The quick and dirty: Fic Stuff:

Moira has been integrated into the overarching plot of “And Overwatch For All”

Because of this, I am currently rewriting major portions of Old Habits.  Yesterday, I finished a major rewrite of chapter 10 (the “evil council is introduce” chapter).  I have the majority of chapter 11′s rewrite done and hope to finish that today as well.  With luck, I will start working on a rewrite of Chapter 13.

Shockingly, I’m keeping a lot of the “present day” plot elements the same (aka, all the stuff leading up to Recall).  But several major “past events” have changed, including Reaper/Gabriel’s backstory.

More on this later.  I will also be writing a separate post JUST for fic stuff, if you prefer to read only that.

Personal Stuff:

Extra expenses have started showing up in my life.  Details are under the cut.

My job has not yet promoted me and a coworker the way they said they would in the timeframe they gave us (1 year).  Because of this, I am starting the job hunt again.

I have created a Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/U7U063ZJ)

More under the cut

Alright, so here’s the longer version of what my last like...three months have been like, with both personal/work stuff and fandom stuff.

Personal life/Work:

I have said this in a few places, but I currently work as an entry-level archaeologist for a state department in California.  Full disclosure: I and my fellow coworker are underpaid for our work, which is as variable as conducting documentation research through databases and organizing research on behalf of our higher-level archaeologist and historian supervisors to performing surveys and actual fieldwork digs in every type of weathers in California.  As an example, two weeks ago (the week of Thanksgiving here in the U.S.), myself and one of my supervisors did an 8 hour fieldwork day which consisted of 3-4 hours of surveying through waist-high grass in pouring rain at 55 degrees F/12 degrees C.  This upcoming week, I and (other underpaid) coworker will be doing two 12-hour days of construction monitoring.  Our work consists of traveling all over the state, with driving that can take a full day to get to a work destination (these are charged to work, don’t worry - I don’t have to pay for that, thank god).

The reason I’m explaining this is because this is a huge reason why some days (or even some weeks) my activity on tumblr, twitter, and AO3 will take a straight nosedive.  On Thursday of this past week, I spent 8-10 hours without checking my phone and came home to 4 missed calls, 8 “active chats” on messenger, 600 messages on discord, and basically a whole day of “social media-ing” missed out.  

If you’re rolling your eyes over this, I get it, I really do - it sounds like all the stuff that older people complain millennials “overvalue,” but (for example) one of those phone calls was from my dentist’s office saying that they will not serve me because (after three months of them NOT checking) they realized that I don’t have the right dental insurance for them.

Fun.

I don’t make enough money to switch to higher, “better services” health and dental insurance, but since I work a job that requires physical labor, I’m scared to cut them from my life.  Said coworker twisted his ankle earlier this year, and work only compensated him for 1 week of “missed” work, when in reality he was walking with a slight limp for 2-3 weeks.  Because of our low-level, we are not given access to benefits that many other state workers get.

Moreover, our sub-department has been promising that the two of us would get promoted “within the year.”  We reached a year working with them in mid-November, and that promise still hasn’t been reached.

So in terms of my personal life, I’m at a cross-roads: I will tell them that they need to promote us, even to the next “low-level position” because that will give us just a few more $/hour which will help A LOT when accumulated, or I’m going to tell them that I’ll have to search for something else.

On top of this, my parents have decided it’s time for me to “pay rent” to live at home with them - a discussion we, frankly, haven’t had on a serious level yet and one which blindsided me this morning.  I am looking into my options but without a better job, they’re not good.

This also doesn’t cover whatever it will take to help me start the legal and medical processes of transitioning, which are, frankly, the main things I’ve been saving money for.

What does this mean:

I’m looking for places to cut costs, but the combination of current expenses + what my parents want from me will take 1/3 to 1/2 of my current monthly paycheck.  I already spend next to nothing on personal stuff, so all my current expenses are “necessities” such as food, gas, and insurance.  I’m looking to cut down on gas costs but it may be awhile before my daily schedule gets adjusted.

The alternate is taking a second job that will permit me to only work my free three days a week.

Doing this means I will have zero time to write or produce content.

For now, I’m not jumping out to do that.  I’ve made a Ko-Fi account (https://ko-fi.com/U7U063ZJ) that I would greatly appreciate any spare money you’re willing to contribute.  Something as simple as a few dollars can go to me covering the cost of my health insurance per month, while I figure out the bigger problems of searching for a job.

The reason why I started with this is because:

Fic Stuff/Writing Stuff:

I do the equivalent of 3-4 full days of “writing” for fandom stuff per week: on my days off, I can write anywhere from 8 to 14 hours a day.  Using just Friday and yesterday as an example, I wrote 9k words, and with whatever I do today, I will likely push that to about 11-12k.

Yes, it is all voluntary, and I do not have to write at the pace that I do, nor the amount that I do.  I do it because I enjoy it, and because, honestly, writing for Overwatch has given me some of the biggest joys and happiness I have felt in like, a decade.  And that includes writing the long essays.  My last big R76 post (http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/167321630835/everything-you-want-to-know-about-reaper-and) spans a whopping 67 pages and 7.5k words in Google Docs (that includes pictures and sources/credits/links/references).

Again, this isn’t to brag, but just to put my writing into perspective, I guess.  This is the equivalent of doing a second part-time job, which was something I attempted last year but was unable to balance my current archaeology job + a part-time retail job + writing.  I dropped the second one because, at the time, I finally had the luxury to choose a job in my profession and writing on the side.  This is a luxury I was fortunate to enjoy for the first half of 2017, but it is steadily becoming undoable as my work increases my responsibilities without increasing my pay.

Fic Updates:

For those of your who have been waiting patiently for information on “And Overwatch for All” I do have some good news that I’m finally ready to share:

Moira has been integrated into the plot.

I got a number of comments here and on twitter that were really supportive of my current version of “AOFA” and I just want to say, thank you all so much.  It means a lot to me that you guys have liked the version of Overwatch I’ve built up and that you found all the characters, including my silly OCs, to be engaging and well-written.  It was soul-crushing to think I would have to lose some of them, but after some time and doing more research on Moira, I feel ready to talk more about her and how she’s going to factor into the updated plot.

To start off with:

None of the OCs will be cut, but some of their roles will change.

Lmao, this surprised me as well, but I’ve figured out a few different ways to make all of the OCs, especially the very obviously contrived “Death Agents,” stick around in the updated plot.

Only one OC (and you can probably guess who, if you’ve started “New Wars”) will change names: the character called “Reaper” in “New Wars Chapter 1″ (the “young Hanzo chapter”) will be called “Reaver.”  This is due to his updated role in the plot.  His background has changed only slightly.

If it wasn’t apparent, this “Reaper” was meant to act as a plot device to cause confusion over Gabriel/Reaper’s actions after the fall of Overwatch, but that has changed because:

I’m switching to Crisis-era and “undercover mercenary” Reaper.

If you’ve read some of my more recent posts on Moira, you’ll know that I’ve switched over to supporting the idea that “something went wrong with Gabriel Reyes during SEP/the Crisis.”  This is due to the fact that you can find a folder labeled “Soldier ID: 24″ in Moira’s Oasis lab, that Michael Chu said that Reyes was interested in getting her help on “matters of genetics,” and that this appears to mesh the “Reaper has existed for decades” concept in Reaper’s hero profile.

Truth be told, I’ve actually been a supporter of this idea of “Gabriel has been Reaper behind the scenes for decades” plot point for a long, long time, almost as long as I’ve been posting Old Habits.  “Reaper”/“Reaver” was semi-messy OC that attempted to bridge Reaper’s original hero profile with the “Old Soldiers” explanation that Gabriel/Reaper gave that “Jack and Overwatch ‘left [him] to suffer.’”  However, I also knew when writing Old Habits that the “Mercy is evil” theory was ALSO not true, so I was kinda stuck:

“If Gabriel = Reaper for decades, why did he appear to blame Jack and Overwatch for his current condition?”

My original solution was to make “Reaper” a different character and have him operating the situation in the background (like a mystery story), but over time this solution got trickier and trickier to work with.  With Moira, I have a chance to rework much of Old Habits/AOFA to better suit some of the details that have come out since drafting it.

This does mean, unfortunately, that all the “76+127″ content is going to become its own, standalone series.

To switch over to integrating “Soldier: 24,” the “76+127″ stories will have to become their own standalone series.  Don’t worry - I’m not deleting anything.  Old content from “Old Habits” will be moved to their own fics, so you can read the whole thing in chronological order.

A new version of my updated ideas on SEP has already started being drafted.  Writing it out is just a matter of time at this point, haha.

The conspiracy/Talon council “mysteries” will become more transparent almost immediately.

With Moira, I finally get the chance to explore some of my ideas in “full format” instead of the kinda awkward “Sombra hacking a chat log” parts yall originally got.  This DOES mean that written portions will suddenly be much, MUCH longer.  For example:

Old Habits original chapter 10 (Sombra hacks an SSO chat log): 17 pages

Old Habits revised chapter 10 (Moira discusses the Route 66 battle with council members + Sombra hacks a chat log): closer to 34 pages

The explosion fight has been changed.

Because of the changes to Gabriel’s plot, the nature of the explosion fight between him and Jack has changed significantly.  It does incorporate new information that Moira revealed.

If it wasn’t obvious, I’ve had a draft version of my ideas for the fight sitting in GDocs for about a year now, and I use that for all my flashback/memories, and also for when Reaper and Soldier: 76 are arguing in the present.  There was a major plot point in the explosion fight that I was extremely uncomfortable with, but found it to be “solid angst material.”  In retrospect, I dislike this plot point and have removed it for another plot point that sits better with me, and fits the overall story more comfortably (I think).

So yes, I DO have a new draft of the explosion fight - written completely from scratch, 100% different in tone and emotionality.  Parts of this should begin to show in updates to Chapter 13, when Soldier: 76/Jack reflects on some of the fight.

The Goal:

The goal for AOFA right now is to update Old Habits in “two big batches” - update the first half (Chapters 1 - 15) within 1 - 2 weeks, and then update the second half (Chapters 16 - 31) shortly after.  Optimistically, before January, but realistically, closer to late-January/early-February.

Thanks for sticking with me - both with this post, and with my life changes.  Things are incredibly and often overwhelmingly busy for me, and I don’t really know where many of these things (both personal stuff and fic stuff) will end up.  I really do appreciate any and all support, even if I’m not able to respond to comments.  You guys make it worthwhile to keep writing, and I apologize for how distant I’ve been with this stuff.

[xoxo-grad-girl-blog]

“What do you want?” / “What do you mean?”

I would like to calmly put this on paper. Or on a keyboard and thus the screen, perhaps. I doubt it will make a difference towards your feelings in any way. Perhaps it will feel like bullshit from your end, like some things feel like bullshit from mine. But I can’t quite shake off several things, and I’ve been trying so hard. Thinking, kind of like you, of trying out new medications. That level trying. 

Like with everything, there will be a layer to your reaction and response to this. The layers go like this:

Read and comprehend it and be affected by it.

Read and be affected by it.

Be affected by it.

Do they seem too simple or too complicated as a breakdown of reactions? I struggle with the middle. Everything is either perfect or failing, and either too complicated or too simple. I like to think that I am deep, that my narrative is quite sophisticated, and at times beautiful. But when reading to just gather a point out of it, it can feel like fluff. In that sense, we cross-judge each other, or perhaps I projectingly judge both of us.

The truth is... I am so confused.

Chronologically, I sit and read into the events, I lay in bed and read into the events, I sit in class and read into the events, I sit in my bathroom and read into the events. 

Despite your best advice, my best instinct, and my friends’ diverse opinions, what I do is hold stationary somehow and read into the events. 

These events, in my head, play out like this:

1. Dave meets me in a restaurant. It’s probably my 20th tinder date in the past 3 weeks. He had even guessed I’d have them planned, as he asked me out nearly a week in advance. I had run late and hoped that the usual “I’m sorry I’m a girl” excuse will prevent any negative reaction.

2. That same day, Dave does quite a few nice and swoon-worthy things, making me feel happy, secure, and comfortable.

3. Dave asks if I want to spend time with him, as he is busy and wants to know if I’ll be around or open to his company. I say yes, because the date was lovely.

4. Dave texts a bit more than I would expect. It is sweet and so pleasant.

5. We go out again, in daytime, again, to see the Endeavor. Dave romantically brings an orchid. We have a lovely time out.

6. Dave continues to text and call. For first two weeks, I am intensely talking to Edwin to distract myself from poor and desperate-seeming habit of over-texting, and to allow space for effort. It feels nice. 

7. Third date is scheduled late, perhaps because I was studying. Between late scheduling and my lateness, we leave my place when most venues begin to close. After what felt a long drive, we agree on Urth cafe. Dave intensifies his speech of women being hoes, his need for a girlfriend, how nothing I do would scare him away. He says “he makes big babies, but not to worry, because C-sections are available”. He emphasizes on not wanting children, although he had previously said this wasn’t going to be serious. I am minorly confused. Once back, I insist it’s too early to go to my place, but Dave wants to cuddle, so we go to his friend’s place. He says sweet things, half asleep, discusses his boner recovery, and expresses his wants of seeing either boobs or butt, or just beneath my dress, but it is confusing, so he clarifies that I should say “take it off, Dave, take it off”. As I’m comfortable and interested in taking it off anyway, dress comes off, right as Dave quickly drifts into his close-to-sleep state. Nothing really happens. I am surprised.

8. We continue to talk. Date 4 is already scheduled for far too late, and it is happening on my bed. Over ice-cream which lasted a very short time. We are cuddling and I am asked whether I want to do it, and I say I don’t know. So Dave says I need to decide. And the truth is yes, I do want it, and yes, I am attracted to him, and yes, he made me feel non-disposable and respected, and he even said he had had a completely negative STD test, and I am going to definitely do it, I know, and he is in my bed and suggesting for it to happen there and then, so I say yes. It is not all Dave. It is Dave being Dave and one ex, another ex, another ex, another ex, it is insecurities and desires and dreams and wants and oh so many wants, and passion and closeness. It is everything. It is all Dave and none is Dave. So it happens. And right there and then, it feels oh so important for it to just happen: for it to happen, for me to feel free, to feel like no one will ever again be able to say I’ve somehow only been theirs. All the firsts are done and bid farewell and this... this feels comfortable. The security of it fuels me through this entire time, calms me down. The feeling like I should never again be so irreversibly broken.

9. I study more and more. Dave texts and calls more and more. He misses me from Mexico, although he told me he’d be going, only a day or two before departure. He and Josh find it fun to on and off talk to me. It’s kind of nice.

10. The talking continues. The texting continues. And it is all quite lovely. My other conversations are dying out. I am allowing him more and more in. Because he feels nice. And because he insists on it. And frankly, I am weary of endings, I am weary of giving too much, and I am weary of many, many, if not all the things I could possibly do wrong, or have done wrong to me.

11. We feel closer. He feels oh so good for my work. He is considerate, he insists I work and not just see him, that seeing him is not a priority, and it makes me smile widely. How wonderful is that? I can smile into my phone in one instance, then solve differential equations in another. It had never happened before. It had always been obsessive and insane and intense and anxious. It had involved hours of thought, writing, reflecting,confusion, and he is insisting that I should let him in, this guy who is somehow going against all that is sane or smart to do with someone like me in December. 

12. January comes and we had gone through a “Christmas” weekend together. And it meant a lot to me, both time and feelings-wise. You see, every time we saw each other felt like I was giving up my life’s goal to see Dave. Like the hour or two we’d spend together was torn away from the time I needed to do amazing, grand things. And he had been wonderful. He’d drive an hour to see me, he’d take me out, he’d be sweet and romantic and handsome. But it still translated to the work time having been given away rather than utilized. And so it justified the efforts as equivalents, because I really, neither had the time to give, nor much of anything else to give, but myself. But to give yourself to someone new while you are still gluing yourself back together, while he insists on it, has felt huge and so worthy it all.

13. I go on happy pills. Dave calls on my way back from the doctor and we talk. Later that night, he says “I already thought you were amazing, and I can only imagine how amazing you will be now that you are getting help.” And that line, a cheesy, simple, loaded line meant the world to me.

14. Dave shows up same night or next and for the first time sees me with messy hair, puffy eyes, wearing 5 year old jeans and a sweater that looks like a long sleeve tee. And we hold each other for an infinity. And it feels so loaded with meaning.

15. Within next few days, I realize how little time I had, and remove nearly all social media apps out of my phone, including tinder. Dave insists I don’t need it, but I had managed to not give meaning to anything unusual or unsatisfying by talking it out. There were people on tinder who, instead of hooking up, were listening about Dave and me, were following closely, giving advice, comforting, offering themselves too, naturally. So I still felt free, I felt like I could leave unhurt if I started hating it. It had been important, and it had meant a lot more freedom for Dave to mess up in any way I would particularly be sensitive to.

16. Dave continues to prioritize my work and my test.

[....]

Upset feelings happen.

[...]

17. To a complaint I had, Dave reacts jokingly and persists that it is an unreasonable one and that I am inexperienced. 

18. Now, I’m basically a dude with boobs. This is hitting hard and upsetting me further.

19. After being left alone for a day to get “space”, Dave wants to talk and is being his usual cocky self. So after a day of having been upset, having been left alone without a release of emotions, to obsess like a psycho, and having been tired of the intensity of it, I tell him I’m not quite sure I want to talk. To which he responds by giving me “more space”. Now, this is a problem, as I had already had space and hated it, and truthfully, more would have been accomplished had I been offered cuddles, but I had been upset, and had been basically cut off from talking to for at least a day, was I supposed to get over my pride and be like “excuse me, but space doesn’t work for me, won’t you come give me a hug instead?”

20. Once Dave has deemed my anger had toned down, he begins to ask for explanations and begins to strategize. In all his strategies, there is none of what I want, and the fact that it is not there does not make me want to tell him to do it, but instead makes me think he is a selfish asshole, because it is practically impossible to be dumb enough to not care about it.

21. The space, another space, and clear lack of care for partner’s pleasure that doesn’t involve his own at the same time had now propagated into 10 days to a few weeks of feeling hurt, upset, and unheard.

22. Dave, conversely, insists that he is the hurt one, because he knows the way he had been acting has been quite nice and as such, he does not deserve to deal with pettiness he is perceiving the reactions to be. What this says is that what he was doing for those weeks my work had been placed up top was not easy for him and had been more than he could comfortably offer. Which meant the smallest sign of criticism was taken to heart on every level, rather than just one.

23. Nothing is concretely addressed as I would expect it. And I am ongoingly asked for directions. Like I am the only one supposed to have a grand plan and a clear, non-selfish idea of what a relationship looks like. Questions are confusing. The more I am asked, the more I pull away, wondering how could this guy not get such simple things. Like saying “whatever” and not meaning whatever. Or saying “I almost came” and not knowing that meant “I didn’t”. 

24. This weighs down. A LOT. I am anxious, worried and sad. Tuesday arrives and I joke how I’d put him right back where I’d found him. Conversation continues. Up until then, for solid two weeks, we had been addressing a physical problem over the phone. 

25. He says it should end. I sit there shocked and teary eyed. Another man who had me, completely had me, for a time of his choosing, and could have had me for as long as he’d want, had he just improved a little, and they all choose the easy route out - to either do nothing and stay or to do nothing and leave. But never change. Another fucking guy who had made me let him in too soon, and who somehow fucked up and couldn’t handle feeling devalued by my words as much as I felt by his actions. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? “It isn’t solution-oriented” is like an insult by now. Of course it is. It is oriented to you feeling how I felt and learning that it is no way to handle someone you want, and it is no way to be. It is never there for any other reason. But if unaddressed, it will keep going until it feels deeply personal. 

26. So I swallowed and agreed we should end it. And then got photos  from our last date. And instead of being left the fuck alone, I was left the fuck with memories. To sit all night and tear up over and over and over again, to sit alone, without tinder, without other guys, without any escape mechanism, which were so strongly discouraged, and so strategically replaced by this one guy who wanted to have all of me to himself until I told him how one of his actions made me feel and he decided I was not worth his time anymore. “You want to orgasm? Nope. You want to complain? Yeah, here is some time off to avoid hearing it, then if you do, time for you to go.”

27. It had been a Tuesday. And the guy who made sure I worked had suddenly cared so little that he’d break up with me the day before my weekly round of deadlines, knowing I had not completed the work. Telling me, casually, to go do it, like nothing had happened.

28. I stayed up from Tuesday morning until Wednesday night, forgetting meds, forgetting to work, forgetting everything but him. Because by then he had crept up my feelings quietly while I was doing other things.

29. I went to sleep on Wednesday. I woke up tired. I dreamed all night of past events, over and over again, trying to predict or resolve them.

30. I went to sleep on Thursday after agreeing to meet on Friday, for purposes of “closure”. It sounded off. I had been told HE was trying to keep me in HIS life. That HE needed reasons to. That HE wanted closure. After HE had ended it. It could simply not add up into anything good. He wanted to see me again? So he could completely tear my heart down? Maybe have that breakup sex he talked about.

31. We met up and were happy to see each other. I talked most things out. He listened. He argued. He tried to explain himself. Ultimately, I decided to let go of my prescribed requirements for him, because he felt good. We drove. And came back. And had made no conclusion, but it felt like we did, because we were both responding well to being around each other.

32. So we walked into my apartment and he picked me up, carried me in and dropped me on the bed, pulling our clothes off, and looking starved and determined. And he gave me all the attention I had wanted in bed. And I loved it. I loved it all. And I didn’t want him to go. But he insisted he had to, and had to, and had to. And when I asked if this meant we were back together he flat out said “yeah, sure”, like his main goal had been to drop me on the bed and not make up with me.

33. So now he is busy. He texts less. He schedules hardly anything. He still calls, though. He texts so little I cannot help but text first a few times, which proceeds to make me feel further vulnerable. 

34. He has a plan of some sorts. Either it is manipulative, with an attempt to get me to do what he’d like or get me to give him more attention in return for attention he’d given me, or he’s lost interest. Or perhaps he is also still recovering from a really sad week.

35. He now hardly cares about the work I have. He doesn’t say “go study and I’ll talk to you later” with later actually happening. Sometimes he just says “go study” as a courtesy, or checks in with “have you finished work?”. It feels empty or confused. He insists he’s busy, but people like us know that one is only busy when they don’t care to make time. I made time for him to come over. As he made time to do it. It wasn’t a lazy Sunday and we had nothing better to do. It was stolen hours and stolen calls and stolen texts. It was more than either of us could give, but we gave it.

36. Until he hurt me. And until he got hurt by me feeling hurt. How self-centered must one be to spin their feelings into the spotlight over my bruised and battered ones, over me finally gathering myself into feeling them? How self-centered must he be to leave me because I couldn’t feel the way he had planned? 

37. So now this is my default. There aren’t bubbly butterflies when my phone pings, because it is about 50% likely that it would be him, and even when it is him, the texts are short and sparse: “Wassup?”, “I’m tired”, an occasional “I miss you”. He insists that he just got busier because of class time he had added. But I feel like if he doesn’t know it yet, he is, at the very least, subconciously pulling away. Dave, though? C’mon, he knows exactly what he’s doing, and he is loving every second of it. Especially saying that he’s not a jerk.

38. So, what are we now? No fucking clue. But I do know I feel like an infrequently visited almost-something. I feel like this will break again, or I feel like it will never feel the way it used to. Even if he reads every single line of this, and especially then. While it teaches me about permanence of words, I can’t help but feel hurt that I have to be the one who is not treated right and the one to forgive, and while doing so, say nothing negative, if I want a relationship to continue the same way it started.

39. A lesson for future or a lesson for now? It is insane to expect me to take an extra hour or two of travel and see him in his pocket of the city, while all the work I do and all the time I have directly feed into a hugely meaningful and shiny degree. All the time he has is going to doing chores and attending classes “for fun”, but he still gets to complain about being busier, because everything he is doing right now is just that useful. And, to be honest, I do not want to complain myself. I just really, really want someone who will make me forget all my complaints and add none more.